Wasp Harvest
by Overlithe77
Summary: 'We are going to do great things together.' 1947: Bucky Barnes wakes up to a metal arm and Arnim Zola's voice. 1979: Alexander Pierce, newly-minted member of Hydra, takes over a now-useless asset tucked away in a vault. 2014: The master has a mission for the soldier. This is everything that happens in between. Or: Bucky Barnes, disassembled. The Winter Soldier, assembled.
1. Room

**Title: Wasp Harvest**  
><strong>Author: overlithe<strong>  
><strong>Fandom:<strong> MCU/Captain America film series (there are a few elements from the comics, but no knowledge of the comics is required)  
><strong>Summary:<strong> _'We are going to do great things together.'_

1947: Bucky Barnes wakes up to a metal arm and Arnim Zola's voice.

1979: Alexander Pierce, newly-minted member of Hydra, takes over a now-useless asset tucked away in a vault.

2014: The master has a mission for the soldier.

This is everything that happens in between.

Or: Bucky Barnes, disassembled. The Winter Soldier, assembled. Horror/thriller. MCU with a few shout-outs to the comics. Gen, but you can read some Bucky/Steve and a little bit of Bucky/Nat into if you'd like.

Written for **Marvel Big Bang 2014**.

Awesome accompanying artwork by **dark_roast**: archiveofourown dotorg / works / 2515286 (remove spaces)  
><strong>CharactersPairings: **James "Bucky" Barnes, Arnim Zola, Alexander Pierce, Nick Fury, Peggy Carter (cameo), Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanoff (cameo), OCs; gen, but you can read some Bucky/Steve and a tiny little bit of Bucky/Natasha into it if you want  
><strong>Word Count:<strong> 100,000  
><strong>Disclaimer:<strong> This story is based on characters and concepts owned by Marvel Entertainment, the Walt Disney Company, and various other corporations. I'm not making any money and do not intend any copyright or trademark infringement.  
><strong>Rating: <strong>M for violence, language, and themes  
><strong>Warnings:<strong> Moderately graphic violence, character death (as stated or implied in the MCU canon), psychological and body horror. Please note that this fic contains substantial, realistic depictions of severe mental and physical abuse, abusive relationships, depersonalisation techniques, and other topics that are likely to be disturbing and/or triggering for some readers, and reader discretion is _strongly_ advised. There are also references to actual historical tragedies/atrocities, but these are all very brief and mentioned purely as part of the historical background of the fic. Please PM me if you'd like more detailed warnings/content descriptions.  
><strong>Author's Note:<strong> I am greatly indebted to my beta/partner-in-crime **muffinbitch**; this fic wouldn't have been possible without her patient hand-holding, commentary, suggestions, and corrections. Many thanks too to my amazing artist **dark_roast**, who not only created some incredible illustrations but is also insightful, funny, and a blast to work with. **brezcu** provided a great deal of help with plot untangling and characterisation. Finally, a big thank you to the **marvel_bang** mods for all their hard work into putting this challenge together and making it run smoothly.

Before we go in, I think I should mention that in this fic I wanted to explore some aspects of abusive relationships which I feel are particularly important as it comes to MCU!Bucky and his interactions with Pierce (and Zola and his other handlers to a lesser extent) but which are often not understood well, given short shrift, or simply not talked about much, both in fiction in general and in real life. So I feel I should clarify before we go in that everything in this story that touches on those topics and isn't science fiction is either something I researched extensively, experienced directly, or both.

With that out of the way, on to the fic!

(**Note for ffnet readers:** a full, illustrated version of the fic is available in my AO3 account here: archiveofourown dotorg / works / 2620862 / chapters / 5844929 (remove spaces). A direct link to my AO3 account is also available in my profile page. I recommend checking that out so you can see the story with **dark_roast**'s gorgeous artwork.)

* * *

><p><span><strong>Wasp Harvest<strong>

* * *

><p>He is solid; immovable, iron-willed. He showed me one day his killing bottle. I'm imprisoned in it. Fluttering against the glass. Because I can see through it I still think I can escape. I have hope. But it's all an illusion.<p>

A thick round wall of glass.

—John Fowles, _The Collector_

* * *

><p><strong>Part I: <strong>_**The Killing Jar**_

light

snow dead air

white flurry white

whiteout

:=:=:=:

**1. Room**

He sensed the pain before he felt it, a heavy pressure above his right temple. Then he tried to blink, but his eyelids were gummy with sleep. He didn't feel like he'd been sleeping, though. He felt as though someone had knocked him out cold and he was just now rejoining the world of the living. Still fuzzy, he raised his hand to his forehead to check for damage.

There was a rattle of metal. He could tell it was the clink of a chain, even with his head stuffed with cotton, and that snapped him awake. He scrambled up, eyes open, and nearly fell onto a concrete floor. For a second he thought he was in—

_blood_

—an orange room, until he noticed it was only a sweeping light somewhere in the ceiling, splashing the walls like the beacon of a lighthouse.

Then he saw it.

He hadn't noticed it at first, hadn't even felt it, but that was no surprise; his whole body felt numb. But now he was wide awake, hot needle jabbing away at his head and all, and there was this… _thing_ hanging from his left sleeve, encasing his arm. He touched the metal with two fingertips, tentative, as though it might bite if he nudged it awake. It looked and felt like a metal cover, and other than the joints it was moulded so tightly to his arm it could have been painted on. The light sweeping the room turned the metal from steel-grey to red and back again.

He ran his fingers down the metal, almost to where his left hand was balled into a tight fist, then up, looking for some kind of latch. The metal cover went up into the sleeve, and he tugged at the gown's collar, trying to find the spot where the cover ended.

Where the skin of his shoulder had been, there was now a seam of flesh and steel, puckered and angry. He had to twist his head down and sideways to see it fully, and this close the ridges of scar tissue—pink and white and purple—looked like an alien landscape. He was sure he could _smell_ them too, that hospital stink of bleach and sickness and carbolic soap, and—

Cold sweat pooling under leather straps. Whirr of saw on bone, smoke, that smell, Jesus, _that fucking smell_.

He bolted to his feet, his cuffed right wrist trailing the chain behind him. _Get a hold of yourself, Barnes_.

He ran his right hand over his face, as though that would help with the headache, which by now felt like someone had decked him with a crowbar, or with the clutch of nausea in his stomach. Still, he could hear himself think again, which was good, because that was some dynamite advice he'd just given himself, and they weren't going to get out of here if he started flapping about like a headless chicken.

_They_. Him and—which of the others? He paced the room as much as the chain allowed, studying what could be seen under the sweeps of red-orange light. He knew the drill. _James Buchanan Barnes. Sergeant. 32557038_. You just had to repeat it to yourself until there wasn't any room to say anything else, no matter what they did—

_needles electricity_

—to you. _James Buchanan Barnes. Sergeant. 32557038_. The room was twelve by twelve feet, maybe ten feet high, the floor and walls bare. With his right hand, he tried to move the cot, but it was bolted to the floor, and there was a metal grille on the ceiling, probably to stop him from punching the light out.

There had to be a door too, somewhere. If they'd just wanted to kill him, a bullet to the head was much quicker and cheaper. When you wanted to keep prisoners alive, you had to water and feed them once in a while, which meant someone was going to drop by sooner or later. In the meantime, he just had to keep his head screwed on straight. _James Buchanan Barnes. Sergeant. 32557038_. The chain wasn't long enough for him to reach two of the corners, but he could still look for some kind of hidden hinge or panel in the parts of the walls he could touch. He kneeled, joints groaning a little—he must look a real picture in this johnny gown they'd put him in—and felt the concrete with his good hand. There was no give anywhere, but he hadn't been expecting it anyway, considering this cell was…

_Where?_

He knew, somehow, that he was underground, but the last thing he remembered was huddling around a map with the rest of the Commandos. A map of—was it Switzerland? No, Hydra didn't care for neutrality, but that hadn't been it. Austria? Bavaria? His headache turned into an iron band around his temples. Behind his eyelids the black lines of borders and blue ink rivers and little flags jumbled together. He stood up, the chain growing taut behind him with a clink of metal, and rubbed his forehead.

There was now. There was then, before the map, before (the things after) Azzano, before he'd been shot at for the first time, before he shot back, before the war. Between the two sets of things there was a hole, as though someone had cut out a chunk of time with a pair of scissors. Pressing at the hole's edges just made his head fuzzier and his headache sharper.

It didn't matter. _James Buchanan Barnes. Sergeant. 32557038_. That was what was supposed to happen, a shell would blow up underneath you at midnight and all you remembered later was having woken up that morning, like when that very thing had happened to—

'Sergeant Barnes.'

He spun around so fast the chain pinning his wrist rattled. For a split second he was sure he saw a shape crouching in the shadows left by the spinning light. But no, his cell was empty.

'Sergeant Barnes.' The voice was a little louder now, but not more insistent. It was tinny, so it had to be coming from some kind of speaker, even though Bucky hadn't noticed one in his sweep of the cell.

'To your left, Sergeant Barnes,' the voice said, with a note of amusement.

Cold darted inside Bucky's chest. The voice could see him. _His_ voice.

Of course it was _his_ voice. Had he ever expected things to turn out differently, really? What kind of POW camp stuck you in a hospital gown? His body moved towards the left corner of the cell, as far as the chain would let him.

'Come a little closer, Sergeant. Things will be, ah'—a brief pause—'tiresome if we cannot hear each other.'

In between the pain hammering away at his head and the red-orange light, Bucky's eyesight was starting to turn black at the edges, but after a few moments he found the speaker. No wonder he hadn't seen it the first time around: it was tucked away in a corner, too far away for him to reach properly with the chain leashing him, so low he would have to kneel or crouch to speak into it. He got as far as the chain would let him, his right arm stretched behind him, and went down on one knee.

'Fuck off right to hell, Zola,' he said. He'd managed to make his voice not shake, not even a little. 'You manage to catch that? I can say it again louder, if you'd like.'

A metallic chuckle. Bucky could hear the faintest hiss of static behind it. 'Very amusing. I'm glad we did no damage to your sense of humour, Sergeant.'

_We_. No news there, of course, it wasn't as though the bastard would have been working all by his lonesome. Still, it must mean this was another Hydra base, as Bucky had suspected. Not good news, but not bad news, either; he just had to remember that the last time he'd been chained up in one of these, it had all ended with the place going up in smoke. _Just_ _don't say another goddamn word_.

For a few seconds, there was only the hum of static, then a little cough. 'I am sorry, Sergeant Barnes. A pity we did not first meet under better circumstances. But I think you will be able to put all that behind you soon.'

'Christ.' The word slipped out almost without him noticing it. He felt a tug in his left shoulder. When he looked down he saw, despite his headache and the poor light, that the hand had unclenched, and the palm was dotted with rivets. They had to have been bolted straight through flesh and bone.

He jumped to his feet. There was a whirr from deep in the metal thing they had welded to his arm, but he barely heard it. Everything narrowed down to the chain, the walls boxing him in, the red-tinged air filling up his lungs. He pulled on the cuff until it gouged a white crescent in the flesh of his wrist. _Get a grip. Get a grip. Get a grip._

Behind him, Zola spoke again. 'Did he ever notice it, your Captain?'

'What?' His heart still hammered his ribcage.

The voice from the speaker made a little annoyed _tsk_. Bucky's memories of that other room were the colour of fog, which was good, because he didn't think about it if he could help it. There was something sharp, though: in the middle of everything, of chemicals and injections and wires, after handling him like a slab of dead meat some assistant had deposited on his operating table, Zola had addressed him directly for the first time, and told him he was Swiss. Not German. _Biel, to be precise. Very interesting history_. He had been cleaning his glasses as he spoke.

Even with the speaker's distortion, Zola sounded like that again. As though they were two acquaintances discussing the weather, or what to order at a diner. 'Come now, Sergeant Barnes. I think we both know what I mean, no? After you left me so abruptly, didn't you find yourself a—a changed man?' He let out a brief laugh at that, as though he'd just made a terribly witty joke and wanted to mark the occasion. 'Did you manage to keep it a secret?' Zola went on. 'Not very observant, these friends of yours.'

Bucky didn't answer. Instead he padded back to the cot and sat down on the mattress. 'Just do whatever you came here to do and shut up,' he said, after the light had swept the room a few more times. It was starting to fill his eyesight with sunspots, big splotches of red and black.

'I'm not going to do anything to you, Sergeant.' With the speaker hidden in the shadows, the voice seemed to drip from the walls. 'Not without your… cooperation.'

_Yeah, good luck with that._

'I know it must be hard to accept that it will happen, Sergeant Barnes. Do you know what day it is?'

_Don't you have a secretary for that, Zola?_ He managed to stop the words from spilling out. February—no, March, it had to be March. He was pressing at the edges of the hole again, and it was like having someone's name on the tip of your tongue. All his thoughts felt rusty.

March, though. Definitely March. April at the latest. He couldn't have been out for very long. No more than a day or so. Longer than that and you weren't out, you were in a coma.

Or dead.

'Today is the fourteenth of June 1947.'

Bucky ignored him. Maybe the guy believed what he was saying, maybe he didn't, but it had been obvious since Zola had turned the speaker on and opened his mouth that Bucky wasn't just dealing with bad guys, he was dealing with _crazy_, and there wasn't much you could rely on when you were dealing with crazy. Zola might decide to rearrange his organs, or do nothing, or just leave him in here and forget all about him. There was just one thing you could do, and that was get away.

Bucky looked at the ceiling, where the metal grille shielded the spinning light. He might not have found a door, but maybe he didn't have to. If he pried the grille out, maybe there would be a vent, or maybe he could short-circuit something important enough for them to open the cell and send in someone to repair it. At the very least he could break that goddamned light. He rubbed his temple again, almost without—

_in real trouble here_

—noticing it.

'I apologise for the headache.' Zola's voice again, crackling through the speaker. 'It is a side-effect of cryostasis. Hopefully we will perfect the process with time. You understand, I hope. We have very much been moving by trial and errors, since as it happens only someone with your… unique characteristics can survive the procedure without substantial damage. So we don't have many test subjects, as you can imagine!'

_Damage_. That word again. God, what if the hole in his memories—

He stilled, his bones suddenly as brittle and cold as spun glass. _We don't have many test subjects._ Not _we only have one test subject_.

What if Steve was also here?

Some part of him wanted to think that was impossible, but Bucky knew that was nonsense. Just because Steve's body had finally caught up with what was inside, that didn't make him invincible. And he would be the one Zola really wanted. So while the good doctor was here chatting with his consolation prize and Bucky had been mooning over himself as though the cell were made out of mirrors, maybe Steve was strapped to a table, surrounded by white-coated monsters with scalpels and saws and pincers.

'Oh, but I should explain it…' Zola droned on. Bucky had to bite his tongue to stop himself from yelling, from running to the speaker and demanding to know where Steve was. _Stupid, Barnes. That would be stupid_. That would get him nothing, and would probably just make them hurt Steve more. He had to keep his trap shut for once. He caught the thread of Zola's words again. '… from the Greek _cryo_, which means cold. You have been on ice, Sergeant, to put it crudely. Of course, the technology is far more advanced than that which allows us to freeze and thaw, say, a beefsteak. No expense has been spared, but then you are infinitely more valuable than something the housewife picks from an icebox for dinner. Incidentally, how do you like your new arm, Sergeant?'

Bucky's gaze dropped to the metal sleeve on his left arm. That's all it was, wasn't it? Even though the arm still felt numb, much, much number than the rest of his body, the only sensation a faint buzz of pins and needles.

'No? Well, you will grow greatly used to it in time, I am sure. You will find it very useful for all the things we will do together.'

'You're crazy,' Bucky said. It was only a whisper—his mouth was dry—but still Zola heard it. Bucky pictured a shoal of microphones hidden in the shadows, hanging from the ceiling like bats.

'It is all right, Sergeant Barnes,' Zola said, not unkindly. 'I wouldn't expect you to understand right from the start. But you will complete the procedure very soon. Become what you are supposed to be. You will ask us to do it, even.'

When Bucky spoke, it was nearly a shout. 'Go to hell.'

'Oh, it does not matter what I do. Only what you do, Sergeant. You have to sleep sometime, after all.'

Silence. Then a click, and Bucky realised that he was no longer picking up on the soft hiss of static. The speaker had been turned off. He sat in the quiet, not moving, the only sounds his breath and, almost too faint for even him to hear, his heartbeat.

The light went out.

* * *

><p><strong>TBC...<strong>

* * *

><p><strong>Author's note:<strong> The line "A pity we did not first meet under better circumstances" is taken with only slight changes from the _Cold Case_ episode _Our Boy is Back_ (season 1, episode 3), where it was something the perp repeatedly said to his victims… I know that, in the comics, Bucky lost all his memories after falling off the plane. However, in the MCU, judging from the fact that he still has memories of the fall off the train etc even after goodness knows how many ECT/ECS sessions, it seems far more likely that any memory loss would be much smaller. I also wanted to go with a realistic (more or less, given I Can't Believe It's Not Super-Soldier Serum and all) portrayal of a traumatic brain injury, so Bucky has lost the memories of the weeks before his fall, which took place on the 5th May 1945, but everything else is (for now) still intact. We never get Bucky's full serial number in the movies, only the first five digits, so I took the last three digits from the CA:TFA comic book adaptation.


	2. Ganzfeld

**2. Ganzfeld**

* * *

><p>Three days. He held out for three days. He would have that to take to his grave, at least.<p>

:=:

At first he was sure the idiots had just done him a huge favour. He startled a little when Zola or whoever turned the light off—there could be anything in there with him—but he soon quietened. The room was as dark as it got, and that way they wouldn't be able to see him, or what he did.

He reached for the coils of chain lying on the cot beside him. Zola might be crazy, but he was right about Bucky being a changed man. Once he'd got away from the restraints and the stink of chloroform he had begun to notice things. The way he could see and hear things now, or even smell them sometimes, so that he heard a twig break under an enemy's boot or the distant rumble of an engine before any of the other Commandos did. The way he could slow down his heart, his breathing, sometimes—he'd swear—even time itself, so that he'd gone from a hell of a shot to someone who seemed to have the eye and luck of the devil. The way he became stronger at times, without real rhyme or reason, so once he'd almost bent a truck's steering wheel in half when he'd been wrestling a Hydra goon near the Danish border.

_Now would be a good time for that._

His fingers slid up the chain's links to the eye bolt embedded in the wall. He felt the metal for a moment, guiding himself by touch. With the light gone he could think better too, his headache a little more bearable. His thoughts were sharper. Not glass-sharp, but sharper.

He closed his fist around the length of chain just below the bolt and gave it an experimental tug. The metal groaned a little, the squeak louder in the dark, but didn't budge. That was OK. He wasn't expecting it to, not yet.

_Come on._ He stood up, hand still on the chain, and braced his feet against the floor as he wrapped a few loops of the chain around his hand. _Nice an' easy_. He made sure to give the chain a little slack, focusing on the task as though it were an unfamiliar rifle he had to load in the dark. Once he was done, he gave the chain a tug, stopped, felt for the edge of the cot with one foot, then started pulling again. _Come on_. The metal let out a low-pitched whine as he yanked it and the edged of the bed dug into his foot through the thin mattress, but he kept pulling, until his tendons burned and his right arm felt like it was going to pop right out of of its socket. The chain links dug into the flesh and bones of his hand. He was sure the skin had already ripped. _Come on. Fuck!_

His left foot slipped. His knee struck the edge of the cot so hard a red starburst filled his sight and he almost went sprawling across the floor. For a few seconds everything swayed, even in the dark. Then the world settled back into place. He could think again.

_On your feet, soldier._

Slowly, muscles burning, he straightened up and felt around for the chain. Most of it had slipped out of his hand.

The bolt was still buried in the wall. Hadn't even budged.

He had to stop himself from swearing out loud. They might not be able to see him, but he bet they were probably listening, and better not give the bastards anything if he could help it. He kneeled on the cot and groped at the wall and the bolt again, as though he might find that he was mistaken and he'd ripped it apart after all.

Seeing with your fingers was difficult, but he was sure the first link of the chain was bent, and that there were cracks in the concrete, around the rivets fixing the bolt to the wall. Faint, but he could feel them.

All right. Try again. Keep going, like he had for the past two years, barely needing sleep, and he wasn't sure that was down to the things after Azzano. Maybe it was just the war, running on fumes, marching all night, ambushing an armed convoy after a few hours' rest with icy mud seeping into everything. Maybe it was following Steve, because who wouldn't follow him, Brooklyn runt or star-spangled super soldier, to hell itself?

Maybe he was just a stubborn jerk. That was probably it.

He climbed out of the cot. His knee still throbbed, but at least it was a distraction from the headache. Leverage, that's what he needed. Maybe if he used one of the cot's legs? They were bolted to the floor, so he could use one as a kind of pulley. He just had to crawl under the bed…

_Did he ever notice it, your Captain?_

_You could try the other arm._

He kicked the thoughts away. Christ, this was not the time to wonder about what Zola had or hadn't meant, as though he'd said it with flowers. He had to figure out—

_But you could try the other arm._

'Yeah, fine.' The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them. By now the dark swam with red and yellow splotches and he closed his eyes. Not like he was seeing much anyway.

He _could_ try the other arm. The thought made him a little queasy—it wasn't just a cover, he knew that, he wasn't _that_ stupid, these assholes wouldn't have encased his arm in steel or whatever it was because they'd run out of baby shoes to bronze. They must have done some kind of surgery—

_blood snow_

—on it, melded flesh and metal together like those science experiments Stark would sometimes go on about. He called it biological robotics, which had always struck Bucky as inadvertently funny, as though Stark had meant to sound fancy like a college professor and had instead landed on a pulp about Martians zapping farmers with ray guns.

He opened his eyes again and looked down at the spot where his left arm had to be. Some part of him expected the thing to start glowing red or make beeping noises, but he couldn't even see the faintest of outlines. Taking care of Mom and Steve he'd learned a few things, and dressing wounds the best he could in the field he'd learned a lot more, enough to know how to picture the stuff that was usually sealed under the skin. He imagined copper wire wrapped around blood vessels, metal clamps biting on sinew and white slivers of bone. In his mind the thing attached to his arm was vaguely spider-like, full of hair-thin legs.

_So what?_

He hadn't told anyone about the things after Azzano, not even Steve, because who wanted to relive the time when they'd been splayed out and prodded like a guinea pig, but if the results helped, they helped. He'd have time to moan about it later, over a drink or three, and before he could waste any more time thinking he sidled up against the wall and picked up the chain again with his right hand.

_OK, let's see how this thing handles._

The arm-thing made a whirring noise as he flexed his left elbow and raised his hand. He tried to move it forward and it struck the wall with a loud thwack. Too far. When he pulled it back the motion inside his shoulder felt like he had ball bearings under the skin, which he probably did now. He moved the left hand towards the wall, hoping this time he'd manage to be more gentle. The arm didn't just feel numb, it felt like it had been encased in layers and layers of wool weighted down with metal; sensations were distant, tugs on a rope. Trying to get the metal fingers around the eyebolt (Jesus, had it _always_ been that small?) was like trying to play cards while wearing baseball gloves. Doing it in the dark was like playing cards while wearing baseball gloves, blindfolded. After what felt like an eternity of fumbling and nudging the metal-covered hand with his real one, he had the left fist closed around the eye bolt and the first few links of the chain. The air smelled of metal and sweat stung his eyes. He blinked it away.

_Well, here goes nothing._ He flexed his right arm and hoped the left one followed. One, two—

A loud crack and he went flying backwards. Something struck his face a split second before he slammed against concrete. He scrambled onto his side with a spike of panic and groped around blindly, sent a length of the chain clattering when his hand bumped against it. He was, of course, on the floor. He'd just tumbled out of the bed and managed to hit himself with the chain at the same time like a champ. He flushed with embarrassment. He would have thought the dark would make that better, but it only made it worse.

Gingerly, he hauled himself to his feet. His whole left side throbbed as though he'd ripped something open, and he must have bit his own tongue because his mouth tasted like a handful of nickels. There were still loops of chain around his right arm. He shook them off.

He heard a clatter of concrete on concrete.

'Don't jerk me around,' he said, but when he finished reeling the chain towards him, there was a chunk of concrete hanging from the end. He touched it, not quite sure he believed it yet, and his fingers found the bolt embedded in the centre.

He'd ripped the whole thing right off the wall.

He didn't have time to think about it, or about whether he really believed it, or about what he could do now. It was like being inside a radio serial in which the hero got out of the cell and freed all the other POWs. His mind sat quietly as his body padded to what he hoped was the centre of the cell and tossed a loop of chain at the ceiling to try to find the grille.

Once there was a clang of metal on metal he stood back a little and looked up. A flash, just inside his temple, where it hurt: a blizzard, a hole in a stone wall. He squeezed his eyes shut, sending a ripple of pain across his cheek, where the chain had hit him. _A tunnel?_ Whatever it was, it didn't matter. He looked up again, towards the grille he couldn't see, wound the chain around his arm, and before he could think about it, jumped.

His fingers closed on nothing and he landed back on his feet, hard enough to nearly send him sprawling. He straightened up, tried again. This time his fingers brushed the metal cover, slid past it uselessly and he landed on the floor, badly, with a sickening crack in his right ankle that sent a whip of pain up his calf. He hopped on one leg for a few seconds, then resigned himself to sitting down and feeling for a fracture.

For once, he been lucky: there was nothing broken, at least not that he could feel. Sprained, maybe, but sprained didn't really matter. Sprained wouldn't kill you. The problem was getting a handle on that grille. If only he had something to stand—

He sprang up and padded around in the dark, ignoring his limp, until he found the cot again. He did have something to stand on. The thing might be bolted to the floor, but maybe that wouldn't be a problem for his new… tool. He groped around the bed's legs until he found the screws holding it in place. This time it took him much less time to get a grip on them with the metal-covered fingers and rip them away, squeezing and pulling them as though they were nothing but wooden splinters.

He was getting good at using the thing on his left arm. Really good.

It took him a while to find the grille again and drag the bed under it, the metal frame scrapping on the floor so loudly all the while that he was sure every single Hydra bastard around would hear it and come rushing into the cell. _Good. Can fight my way out, then._ Nobody came, though. They were leaving him alone for now, which also suited him. Balancing on the bed, he slipped the metal fingers into the holes in the grille and pulled. It took longer than the screws, but after a while the cover began to bend with a shrill squeak. Wires of pain lit up inside his left shoulder and upper back. He kept going, until the grille finally came loose with a loud snap and he had to use his right hand to keep his balance.

He tossed the grille to the mattress, where it landed with a thump, and felt inside the hole with his good hand. His heart rose into his throat; he couldn't help it. There was the cold glass of the light bulb, concrete sides, concrete ceiling, jagged edges where he'd ripped the grille out, a small opening, no bigger than his fist, where he could feel a rush of cold air, and…

Nothing.

No vents big enough for him to crawl through. No wires he could try to short-circuit.

He felt inside the hole again, more frantic. It was still empty, its walls smooth as a tombstone.

:=:

For the next long while, he tried.

He tried yelling into the speaker, hoping someone would come down to shut him up, someone he could threaten, fight, take as a hostage. He tried saying 'You win, Zola. Let's do whatever it is you want to do.'

There was silence. Not even a whisper of static.

He tried hammering on the walls with the metal fist.

He tried using the chain to dig at the dimple left in the concrete when he'd ripped the bolt out the wall. He gave up once his right arm was itchy with dust, his fingers wracked by cramps, and he could no longer pretend that it wouldn't take him a hundred years to make a hole just big enough for his head.

He tried sticking his hand in the little vent in the ceiling, and achieved nothing except scraping the skin on his palm. Maybe it would get infected and we'd end up in a sick bay. Easier to break out of. He laughed at that, out loud. It sounded like broken glass.

He tried investigating the metal thing welded to his arm. His fingers slid over polished steel, a constellation of filed-down rivet heads. Touching the hand reminded him of those gross old pictures of dissected limbs he'd seen whenever Steve dragged him to the Brooklyn Museum, a jumble of veins and sinew and nerves cast in iron and wire. He dropped the hand and moved to the seam in his shoulder, pressed his knuckles against numb, puffy flesh, and tried to get his thumb under the metal edge. No use. The steel had teeth inside him, like a bear trap. All he managed to do was nearly rip out his nails and make blood well.

He tried breaking the light bulb and root around in the exposed wires. They were dead, as dead as it got. There wasn't even the sting of electricity. When he pulled his hand back, he managed to cut himself on a sharp edge, let out a little snort of pain, then noticed it: the silence, where before there had been the whisper of air. He felt for the vent again, his hand clammy. No, there was still air trickling in.

The flow was weaker than before, though. Much weaker.

In the end he lay on the cot and stared at the dark until his eyes were burning and he could see big hazy strips of green and yellow and purple, the colour of bile and bruises and sickness.

:=:

He wasn't sure how long he lay there, staring at nothing. Not long, he hoped. Long enough for the pain in his head to fade to a dull throb and the pain in his ankle to grow to an iron band around his bones.

Long enough for the hunger and thirst to start in earnest.

He'd managed not to think about it until now. It had been easy to ignore, just a faint rumble in his stomach, a dryness in his mouth. Stuff you couldn't afford to worry about when you were stuck in a windowless room in the middle of nowhere and had to figure a way out. But now the hunger pangs had grown until they were starting to mosey the pain out of the way. And the thirst, well, the thirst wasn't so bad, maybe they'd watered him before he'd been asleep, but he could tell it wouldn't take long for the thirst to give the hunger a run for its money.

And then there was the air. He might not have stopped it from coming into the cell while he was messing around with the vent like an idiot, but he'd done _something_, hadn't he? The room was growing hotter. Maybe not enough to bother him, not yet, maybe not enough for anyone else to notice. (Would Steve? He didn't complain about the cold, but he'd never really complained about anything. If Bucky hadn't been around he'd probably have died of an asthma attack at twelve while wheezing _'m all right_.) But the temperature was increasing, little by little. In a few hours' time—

He rolled onto his stomach. The bed groaned underneath him and the mattress stank of his own sweat. In the last two years he'd learned to sleep anywhere, sitting up, on his feet, sometimes even when he was doing something, a part of his mind slumbering while his legs walked or his eyes scanned a tree line. Sleep was one of your best buddies, below clean water but well above _hot_ water, razor blades, and bars of soap, and right now Bucky just wanted to close his eyes and catch up with his old pal for a few hours.

_You have to sleep sometime._

'Screw you, Zola,' he muttered, and hoisted himself down to the floor. He pictured them all when this was finally over, him, Steve, the rest of the Commandos, Peggy, hell, even Stark. No, _especially_ Stark; who else had the money to take them all on a yacht and serve them champagne in ice buckets and steak brought in from Oscar's Delmonico's? (Where else would they all be allowed to sit together, after the war, if not at sea?) In the cell, Bucky crawled around on all fours and felt the floor with his flesh hand, trying to find a gap, a hinge, a rivet. Jim Morita would get soused and start singing in a voice that could kill birds mid-flight, Dum Dum and Gabe, who could go through drink like a fish through water, would get started, calmly and methodically, on fleecing everyone at cards. And he, well, at some point he was going to realise that no one was actually listening to his funny story about escaping from the Hydra base, and would join Peggy and Jacques around the things rich people ate. Salmon drenched in butter. Strawberries, the kind he'd only really seen in pictures, huge and swollen with juice. Big spoonfuls of sweet cream.

He could tell the proper story later, when he and Steve went to Coney Island, no outfit, no uniforms, no fatigues, and had root beers so cold they frosted the glass and hot dogs that were probably mostly hoof and the occasional rat dropping but would taste better than life. They would ride the Cyclone—

_paybacktrainhangon_

—and this time he was pretty sure Steve wouldn't throw up.

His fingers hit something. He nearly cried out, in surprise and relief, until he realised it was only a wall. Still, he had to try those too. He felt the concrete, inch by inch. His fingers trembled. Sweat dripped into his eyes and down his face, thick as tears.

Maybe he would tell the story to Becca too. A pang of guilt hit him, almost stronger than the hunger and tiredness. How many times in the past two years had he had the chance to send a few words to his little sister and had instead grabbed some sleep in a real bed, or had a drink and a smoke, or played a record dusty with the debris of bombs? He would make it up to her once he was out of here. Make her those buttermilk pancakes they both loved so much, drowned in syrup, heaped with blueberries, the real thing even if he had to go to fucking Vermont and pick them off a field. Did she still like them? She was almost eighteen now.

He was going to tell her about getting out of this place. Just the less bad parts, just like everything he'd tell her about the war. He wasn't going to tell her about slitting someone's throat and feeling the life gush out, how easy it got, like something you put in a box and locked away. He wasn't going to tell her about the burnt-out villages, the old women crying over broken bodies, alive and dead, about how they'd come across one of the camps and saw soldiers push out empty baby strollers, half a dozen at a time, for over an hour.

He wasn't going to tell her about how, after he finally found a hair-thin crack in one of the walls, he hacked at the door (if it was a door) with the metal hand until the thing made a few clicking noises then locked into a useless claw, after he'd managed to do nothing more than gauge a few furrows in the concrete. He wasn't going to tell her about slamming his body against the door until he was sure he was cracking bones and spraying blood. He wasn't going to tell her about how he slid to the floor, panting and bruised, and wailed like a cow stuck in a bog.

He would tell her about how things got a bit hot. He wasn't going to tell her about how the air in the room was so thick he made a little panting noise every time he drew a breath, or how his body dripped sweat until he grew so thirsty that the sweat just _stopped_, and then there was only his cracked lips and his tongue sitting like a dried root inside his mouth. His skin was covered in hives; he was sure that every time he touched it, big strips of it peeled right off.

He wished he'd licked the sweat off himself when he still could. He wasn't going to tell her that either.

He definitely wasn't going to tell her how, after a thousand years of this (two days, maybe; god, he hoped it had been _at least_ a day), he ended up drinking his own piss out of his cupped hand. Every last drop, even licked his palm after.

'Had worse beers,' his mouth said, then coughed out a wheeze of laughter. The words scratched his throat. It was like trying to speak through sand.

No, he wasn't going to tell her about this bit. Not her, not anyone, not even Steve. At least his face was already too hot to burn with shame. What an amazing stroke of luck.

He could tell her about not giving up, at least. Because he wasn't going to, was he? He crawled out of the spot where he'd been lying and inched across the floor, going nowhere. Looking for something. Maybe he should stay put, conserve his energy, but he couldn't. He had to try. He had to at least try.

He pressed his forehead against the metal in his arm. It had been cool at first, blessedly cool, but now even it was growing warm. Maybe it would turn hotter and hotter, until it burst into flame and turned him into a smear of ash.

Maybe that wouldn't be so bad.

He kept crawling, a worm stuck on a hook, writhing under an unforgiving blaze.

:=:

Tiredness. He'd forgotten about tiredness. He had spent two years thumbing his nose at it but now it was _back_, it was back _in style_, one night only, line of long-legged chorus girls, all-singing all-dancing. Hunger wasn't even in the running anymore. His kidneys were two hot spikes inside him, the skin under the handcuff was rubbed raw, his limbs would spasm once in a while, but pain had gone down by total KO. Pain was out and thirst was taking a pounding, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, tiredness, your undisputed cham—

He slapped himself. He couldn't stand up anymore but for now sitting up had kept him from sleeping. He'd slapped himself to stop his body from sliding to the floor, his sandbag-heavy eyelids from dropping shut.

_You have to sleep sometime._

He wasn't sure where he was. In the dark. A million miles in every direction. A hole cut into nothing.

If only he could sleep. Five minutes. _Yes lie down just lie down._ Just five minutes. Wouldn't make a difference. Catnap. One eye open. Did it all the time. No one would notice.

He hit himself with the curled-up metal hand.

His ears rang. He was face-down on the floor, his mouth full of his own blood. When he swallowed it, the thirst came roaring back. He thought of finding the glass shards from the broken light, slicing a vein open, and sucking it dry.

At least he hadn't knocked himself out.

'Don't fall asleep.' Speaking was agony. He did it anyway. His head was throbbing again, but the pain was good, the pain kept him awake. He sat up, grabbed a handful of his hair, and yanked. 'Don't fall asleep.' Another slap, with the real hand, just hard enough to sting. 'Don't fall asleep.

Don't fall asleep.

Don't—

:=:

—fall asleep.'

The light was a thread of milk, falling from the heavens. When he lifted his hand towards it, it curled around his fingers in ripples of colour.

'It's time.'

Yes, that made sense. He got up. He was still on the floor, but he was also up.

He had expected Steve, but instead it was Peggy. The light made a green halo around her hair.

As long as it was _someone_.

_OK, let's do as bees and buzz off_. The words didn't come out of his mouth but they spilled into the air nonetheless, where they hovered in place, their edges a shimmery blue. _Kick some Hydra butts on our way out._

Peggy drifted a little closer. 'I'm afraid not,' she said, but it sounded like _frayed knot_, which was actually pretty _funny_, everybody laugh, her lips were too red but the colours around her hair were shifting, bright yellow, orange, neon-blue…

'I'm sorry.' She shook her head. Red dripped from her mouth to the floor. 'But I think you understand by now. We lost. We died. And now it's your turn.'

He looked down at his hands, where the flesh began to melt, and underneath there was metal instead of bone.

:=:

Awake. He was awake. He gasped into his right hand. The skin was cold, but it was real. Nothing else was real. He was just seeing things.

He squeezed his eyes shut but he still saw the most terrible colours.

:=:

He was a coward who didn't just hold on until he died. He would have that to take to his grave, too.

:=:

The last crawl was the longest.

He dragged himself across the floor, the chain rattling behind him, the metal hand bumping on the concrete. He couldn't feel his body any longer, just the lead weight of the heat, the stink of ammonia and stale sweat in the air.

Hours. It must have taken hours. Days. His hand hit a wall, slid down to the floor. Don't stop. Don't stop.

'Zola.' It sounded like a puff of dust. Was he even next to the speaker? His body convulsed again, then he rolled onto his back. Sensation returned, just a little. His skin had sloughed off and he was crawling on deadened nerves.

Another word sandpapered its way out. 'Someone.'

They were going to leave him here. Punishment for not saying yes straight away.

Everybody was dead. A fortress full of corpses.

He coughed. It burned his mouth. 'Please.'

Light, wounding. He winced. Closing his eyes hurt. Hands touched him, but he didn't fight back. He didn't even feel shame.

Cold air. Rubber squeaked underneath him.

'Hello again, Sergeant.'

* * *

><p><strong>TBC…<strong>

* * *

><p><strong>Author's note:<strong> In our world, the word robotics was coined by Isaac Asimov in 1941 (I actually did my best to check all the slang and jargon in this fic to make sure it's period-appropriate, but bear in mind that my knowledge of linguistics could fit in a thimble, so I apologise in advance for any mistakes :)). In this fictional universe, it sounds like the sort of thing Howard Stark would come up with. Bucky's younger sister Rebecca is from the comics. She's not mentioned in the MCU (not really counting the Smithsonian poster as MCU canon, since it contradicts itself, like, three times) but neither is there anything in the films that contradicts her existence, so for my fics I've decided she also exists in the movie-verse. With regards to Bucky's family in general, I've lifted several elements from comics (616) canon, but altered it in several ways, both to fit with the MCU and to serve the purposes of this story. There will be more about Bucky's family and childhood in future chapters. Comics!Bucky also came across a Nazi concentration camp, incidentally, in _Captain America and Bucky_ #623 (Dec 2011). He reacted in pretty much the way you'd expect: ic . pics . livejournaldotcom / overlithe / 15266763 / 257418 / 257418_original . png (the uniform was part of an infiltration ploy, in case you were wondering). Typically, a person can survive without water for about three days, less than that in hot temperatures, and death is usually preceded by organ failure and coma. However, I assumed Bucky would last longer (while conscious) due to the effects of I Can't Believe It's Not Super-Soldier Serum. Peggy showing up in Bucky's hallucinations is kind of a roundabout reference to the comics/cartoon AUs in which they end up together in some form or another, because Bucky/Steve, Bucky/Nat, and Bucky/Sam (and OT3 & OT4) are the ships of my heart, but I'm really fond of Bucky/Peggy too (to be honest, I don't have a Bucky ships fleet, I have a Bucky ships armada). Actually, now I feel really bad for bringing up my ships in such a terrible, terrible context. :(


	3. Operant

**Author's Note:** The German translations in this chapter were kindly provided by **shadowvalkyrie**, with additional comments and suggestions by **gelbes_gilatier**, **lied_ohne_worte**, and **syredronning**. Thank you all for your help!

* * *

><p><strong>3. Operant<strong>

* * *

><p>'Look what you've done to yourself,' Zola said, somewhere out of sight, then let out a mutter of disapproval. Bucky kept his eyes half-closed against the light above him, but he could tell he was being wheeled somewhere. Faces drifted in and out of sight. He tried to lift his hand. Instead, his body spasmed again.<p>

Zola's voice wafted above him. 'Calm down, Sergeant. _Ist die Infusion bereit_?'

_Is the—infusion_, he supposed—_ready?_ Did Zola know Bucky could understand German? No time to think. There was a quick jab of pain in the flesh of his arm. Straps snapped around his wrists, a door swung open.

That stink again, hospital soap, rubbing alcohol. This time he fought them, he did, he could swear he did, but all he managed was to beat helplessly against the restraints. His sight was hazy with fever: it made the ceiling lights bob like corks. His head lolled to one side and he saw white coats, machines he didn't recognise. Out of the corner of his eye, a big wall clock, the number seventeen, some letters he couldn't quite see, 1947.

_! ! !_

'You are really going to have to calm down.'

_Crazy. This is crazy._ His throat was too dry to let the words out. He was going to die here, strapped to a gurney, his skin sloughing off his bones. He could feel it peel away and slip down to the floor. Die with Zola looking down at him and that smell filling up his nose.

'Here.'

Bucky's head slumped towards the voice.

Zola looked just like he did before. Same piggy eyes behind round glasses. Same slightly worried, slightly smug expression. Same bow tie.

No, all different. The rat bastard was holding a glass of water.

Thirst got up from the dust and came roaring back with a rocket blast. The fever turned into a sharp steel wire around his head. He could see the beads of condensation around the rim of the glass. His eyes prickled with sand.

'You want this, Sergeant?' Zola shook the glass. A few drops of water fell on the hand holding it. Bucky would have licked them right off his skin.

_Yes! Please, God, yes!_ His tongue was a blistered mass in his mouth, but Zola didn't need to be told. He drew a step closer, holding the glass just out of reach, but close enough for Bucky to _smell_ it, whoever said water had no smell was a goddamn _liar_, that smell, faintly mineral, faintly metallic, so cool, so sweet…

'I will give it to you, but you really have to behave better,' Zola said, in the tone of someone explaining something to a particularly dim child. 'What is going to happen next, you have to be a part of it, Sergeant. No more stubbornness. What do you say?'

_No._

He would have offered Zola a suck job in exchange for a sip.

'—s'

'What was that, Sergeant?'

He closed his eyes so no one could see. His throat wept, but he managed to force the word out. 'Yes.'

'Very good!' He sounded genuinely elated. 'You see how easy it is, when people work together?' Still he didn't bring the glass to Bucky's lips. 'I can't let you drink right away, you're too dehydrated and would likely, ah—choke. But I will give you some ice, you will put it under your tongue and you will like it very much. Then you can have the water. Get you ready for the last procedure. _Sie können den rechten Arm loslassen_.'

A woman spoke in a language Bucky didn't recognise. Russian? Polish? Something Eastern European for sure, but it couldn't be Russian, the Russians wouldn't be working with the Germans. _I am Swiss_. Hydras, so many heads, cut one off, two more will take its place.

_1947!_

Thinking was agony. He just wanted some water.

The woman spoke again, German. _Are you sure, Professor?_ An interpreter. '_Ich versichere Ihnen, wir haben das Versuchsobjekt unter Kontrolle_,' Zola said. Having something under control? They were talking about Bucky himself, maybe. He didn't understand it all, this was science-talk, not ordinary German. Someone fussed with the binding around his right wrist. He opened his eyes, looked down at himself as far as he could, which wasn't far. His arm kept making little jerking motions, the skin covered in an angry rash, a needle buried in the crook of his elbow. The nails were half torn off, the fingers bloodstained. When had he done that? He didn't remember.

A man said something in the unknown language and a chorus of laughs followed. Bucky tried to twist his head around to look at them, but the strange machines were in the way. He thought he could see suits, maybe glimpse the muzzles of guns. A white coat came at him with a pair of scissors. He tried to raise his right arm but it only flopped and twitched helplessly. His gown was cut away.

'Here, Sergeant.' Zola held an ice chip in his fingers, and when he placed it in Bucky's mouth, he was careful not to touch the lips.

Cold. So cold and sharp and sweet. Zola droned on, but the world narrowed to the feel of the ice on Bucky's sore tongue, the melted water dripping into his throat. He shuddered, felt a wave of queasiness rise from his stomach. Still he chewed on the ice like his life depended on it, which it probably did. He heard gasps. It took him a while to realise the sounds were coming from his throat.

'—_nur ein Prototyp_.'

Pressure on his left side. He turned his head around to see—

_What? God_, what_?_ More white coats swarmed around his arm, the one with all the metal. It was sitting on a table a few feet away. There was a ring of steel on his shoulder, wires and clips snaking out, hanging where the rest of his arm should be. Under the lights the ridges of scar tissue were a shiny pink, the red-purple of storm clouds. He tried shrugging his shoulder. Metal whirred, wires dangled. He didn't feel the motion; it was happening very far away, under panes of glass. Liquid oozed out. It stank of pus and engine oil, enough to make him gag. Ice water got into his nose.

'There, there.'

Hands placed a blindfold over his face. He started to struggle—to squirm in place—but it was only a damp cloth. No chloroform, no horrible chemicals. Fingers traced little circular motions on his temples. It felt… good, almost. '_Ja, machen Sie weiter, das wird ihn beruhigen_,' Zola said, then fed him another ice chip.

'You are very strong, Sergeant.' A hubbub of voices. Machines, whirring away. 'Soon you will be in good enough shape for us to complete the procedure, even after all the damage you did. Very foolishly, I may add.'

Water dribbled out of his mouth. Thoughts were difficult, molasses-thick. In the half-dark, with the fingertips rubbing his temples, he just wanted to fall asleep. _Don't. Don't. Don't._ 'You. You did,' he gurgled.

'I most absolutely did not. I have not hurt you in any way. I have not even touched you. You have only yourself and your stubbornness to blame for any damage you suffered. Had you cooperated from the start…'

A gnawing in his stomach. Was it hunger? He had forgotten about it, and now maybe it was trying to remind him it existed. 'Tried to talk.'

'Hmm? No, I rather think I would have remembered that, Sergeant.' Bucky could sense Zola drawing back, then placing something cold and metallic against his fingers. It took a while for his hand to flinch, and slap weakly against the object. 'Do not worry, it's only a bowl of ice. Feel free to use it. The prep protocol can be very long. Very tedious. But be careful of the needle in your arm. You do not wish to hurt yourself.'

_Yeah, anything but that, pal!_

_Rip it out._

He remained stuck in place, flesh splayed out on the table while his head drifted about in a fog bank. Once in a while he understood words, words that sounded almost like English ones. _Protocol. Subject. Surgery._ Things happened to his body while the words were said: a needle-prick on the back of his hand, suction cups attached to his skin. A saw buzzed to life and his whole body clenched, the restraints biting into his flesh. But the saw was far away, and the only smell was of smoke and molten metal.

The cloth slid off his face and he could see the ceiling, ringed by a gallery, vague shapes behind the glass, looking down at him. He knew he was supposed to feel embarrassment over his nakedness, but all he managed to do was stare up, to where the lights looked like a shoal of angry eyes.

_Is it… done?_ He couldn't be sure if he spoke out loud. He tried to move his head but blocks of some kind were holding it in place. All he could do was look down or sideways until his eyes ached with the strain, and all he could see even then was a halo of wires around him, vanishing into the bowels of machines. Lines hummed softly on the screens. Snatches of German: Zola was talking through the interpreter. People scribbled away, ignoring the body on the table. He tried to move his right arm, but it wasn't free any longer, or maybe the flesh had just gone dead.

A machine hummed to life, started making a rhythmic clicking sound. Lines spiked across a screen. 'The procedure has already started, Sergeant Barnes,' Zola said, somewhere behind Bucky's head. The clicking grew louder, the thumping of an enormous heart. 'I am afraid it is likely to be long and… difficult. But I can anaesthetise—make you sleep, if you'd like. When you wake up it will all be over. You won't feel a thing.'

_You must sleep sometime_. No. No way. He tried to choke out a _go to hell_ but only managed to dribble water down the corner of his mouth. He shook his head instead.

'Are you sure? Very well. _Keine Betäubung. Er möchte bei Bewusstsein bleiben_.' The woman translated again. There were a few titters of laughter. Zola turned back to him. 'You know, you are going to regret it. But if you insist…'

:=:

He regretted it.

:=:

'It is nearly over.'

The voice was very far away. The world was black wires, fuzzy green waves on screens. _James. James Barnes. James Something. Something. Bucky. My friends call me Bucky._

He had long since stopped making noises. He had stopped thinking even before that.

_Sergeant? Sergeant. Brooklyn. Three two…_

_Three two… Numbers, other numbers. Five. Barnes. Bucky Barnes. Brooklyn. New York. America. Something America. Captain! Captain America and his—and his—_

Some of the screens turned grey. Lights swam above him.

Excited voices, saying something he didn't understand. His head was allowed to loll to one side, scratchy fabric on his cheek, a man moved towards him, white coat bow tie tuft of blond hair.

The man—the man—

_Zola! His name is Zola! Zola!_

'Here, Sergeant.' _Sergeant, yes, Sergeant._ 'You made, hmm, quite a fuss, but it's over now. You can— _Ach je!_'

He—

_bucky my name is bucky_

—had yanked his body sideways and swung halfway off the table. A drinking glass slipped out of Zola's hands and shattered on the floor.

_Shards_. Hands pulled his now-limp body back up. A cuff of leather and metal hung, ripped in half, from his right wrist. A needle was driven into the plastic tubing snaking away from his arm. _Don't_. On a screen a grey line was spiking, spiking, up and away. Where was his left arm?

_I am going to take those shards and shove them right in your throat, Zola_. Blood, trickling down, Technicolor-bright. He felt sick. _You will open your mouth to say_ Ach je! _But you won't get to—_

:=:

The nausea woke him up.

Pain came right after, dull-edged, like he'd been pulled apart and stitched back together inexpertly. He rolled to the edge of the bed and dry heaved. A thread of spittle hit the floor tiles, but there wasn't anything for him to throw up.

His head. Something had happened to his head. He sat up, and that's when he noticed that his left arm wasn't just numb, it was _gone_, a bulky bandage covering the spot where it should attach to his shoulder.

But he'd _had_ an arm, hadn't he? A metal arm. Orange-red light. Wires stitching his flesh to a screen full of green lines.

_Oh God_. Something had happened to his memories. He had woken up in this place before, in a—he thought—different room, and then something had happened to his memories of the after. Cut away at them until only frayed ends remained. The ragged edges of a hole. He tried to grab at the glimpses but it was like trying to force out a name sitting on the tip of your tongue. All he managed to do was make the inside of his skull ache.

He raised his remaining fingertips and touched the side of his head, gingerly, as though it were made of glass. His face was damp. He hoped it was just sweat and not tears.

_You still have yourself, Buck. You still have yourself_. The thought was faint, and it was mostly in Steve's voice, but it was still true. He didn't know how he'd ended up here and he didn't know what had been done to him in the meantime (what had happened to his arm?), but he still knew who he was, and where he'd come from.

_James Buchanan Barnes. My friends call me Bucky_. He tried to recall his earliest memory.

_Dad._

Still a little jab of pain. The first time he'd met Steve, then. Maybe not the happiest memory ever, having to pull three bullies off him, but when a tiny scrap of a kid decided to go up against the biggest, meanest jerks in school and then shrugged off a black eye like it was nothing, you couldn't help but think things were going to have a way of turning out all right. You'd make sure they would, even if just for his sake.

Meeting Steve for the second time, in class. Steve was told off for adding all kinds of weird creatures to what was supposed to be a drawing of an apple. 'Don't mind him,' Bucky had said. 'I think your drawing is the bee's knees.'

Becca hanging off their sleeves in Coney Island, begging to go up on the Wonder Wheel, then Bucky sitting between her and Steve, wondering, as the car began to rock, about which of the two would be the first to turn green and upchuck their cotton candy.

'I see you're awake, Sergeant.'

Cold rippled through his flesh before a thought could form. _Zola_. He knew, from some place deep in the hole of memories, that Zola was here, that Zola had dome something to him, but he wasn't afraid. Not at (after) Azzano, not chasing the—

_train_

—creepy little ghoul across Europe, not now. Not now. Not now.

'How are you feeling, Sergeant?' Zola went on. His voice was coming from a speaker embedded at eye level in the wall. Looking at it made Bucky a little uneasy. He should have been going over every inch of the cell the moment he'd come to instead of sitting around moping.

'Swell. Probably go for a swim later, maybe a bike race...'

_Door, where's the door?_

'Ha! You are making a joke, but as it turns out I should very much like to see that. The procedure, I am happy to report, appears to have been a complete success. Enough for the General to share some of his excellent champagne, at least. And you must be feeling the differences already.'

_What? What differences?_

_Who the hell is the General?_

'Of course,' Zola went on, 'they won't be as noticeable as they were for the—the other subject. You must have become quite the expert on those, having been in such close proximity…'

If that was supposed to be a jab, Bucky ignored it. Instead he looked down at his bare torso, trying not to let his gaze drift to where his shoulder ended abruptly, or the spots where he could feel a phantom limb, lying against his side. There was a ring of pink, still-healing skin around his wrist, faded bruises on his fingertips. Seeing them—remains of injuries he couldn't remember—made the nausea swell until his head was swimming. What else had been done to him, in places he couldn't see? He balled his hand into a fist, squeezed it until his fingers ached. _Focus._ Whatever Zola was prattling on about, he couldn't…

Maybe he was a little bigger now, more muscular. And maybe that scent of soap he'd been smelling since he'd woken up wasn't the room, maybe it was a faint trace of scent clinging to his skin and he was picking up on it because now, he _could_. Better than—

He dashed out of the bed and got almost to the wall (so fast) before stinging pain arced through his body and sent him sprawling across the floor. He panted as his body shook, then stilled, beyond his control. A smell of singed skin hung in the air and he could hear the soft crackle of electricity.

'Oh, don't look so put out, Sergeant,' Zola said, sounding as though something terribly amusing had just happened. Pain still rippled under Bucky's skin, but he managed to roll up onto his side. This close to the wall he could see a fisheye lens next to the speaker, like a blind eye. _Get up. Get up get up_. 'It was only a little electricity. Should I have let you slam yourself against the walls? Was that the plan, hmm?'

'Thought I'd start by giving you a good kick in the pants, see how things went from there,' Bucky spat out, voice shaky. Those weird tiles on the floor… what if the whole thing was electrified? Maybe the walls too, they did look like they were made of some kind of metal.

'Oh, you wouldn't break through the walls, not even with all your new strength. But it was nice to see how fast you are now. You will be even faster once you have your new body under control, I am sure.'

'What did you do to me, Zola?' _What did you do to my head?_

_Don't let him see you're afraid._

'Nothing you didn't want, Sergeant. Nothing without your—ah, _eager_ cooperation, one might even say.'

Bucky sat up. His body was still sore, but it was no longer shaking, at least. 'Bullshit.'

The speaker let out a noise of disapproval. 'We are going to have to do something about your language, Sergeant. And it is not a lie. See for yourself.'

The black eye on the wall winked to life and a rectangle of white light appeared above the bed. Bucky could hear the rat-tat-tat of reels spinning inside a projector, maybe a few yards away.

He almost didn't recognise himself on the black-and-white film, even though he supposed he looked the same as always. In the film he lay on an operating table, staring vacantly as people—doctors, scientists, he supposed—put electrodes on his skin and pressed buttons on machines. His film-self's right arm was unbound, but he wasn't trying to break free. He wasn't even moving, just shuddering once in a while, like a cow awaiting its turn in a slaughterhouse.

'You drugged me,' he said, but how did he know? He felt another dry heave coming and lowered his head until the bout of nausea passed, then scrambled back onto the bed, where he wouldn't have to look at himself, letting it happen, doing nothing. 'Enough. Stop it, Zola.'

'As you wish.' The projector clicked back to silence and the beam of light vanished.

For a while, Bucky didn't speak. He sat on the bed, head on his knees, listening to his own breathing, the hum of the electric lights. He hoped Zola was gone, that he had finally left him alone, but he kept thinking of a metal mouth, a glass-covered eye, unblinking, ever-watching. Why hadn't these people just killed him? Why hadn't they just put a bullet in his head?

When Zola spoke again, his tone was soft, as though they were two friends chatting. 'Would you like to know what I think, Sergeant?'

'Been waiting for it forever,' Bucky said, but it was reflex. He felt more tired than he'd ever felt in his life, more tired than when he'd marched thirty miles across northern Italy, more tired than after two weeks under heavy fire. He knew he had only just woken up from a drugged sleep, that now he could probably go for much longer than he'd been capable of after the things after Azzano.

But here he couldn't close his eyes.

Zola, who had let out a polite little laugh at Bucky's reply, like someone indulging a child, went on. 'We have a file on you, Sergeant. I have studied it carefully, even though it does not make for very interesting reading. You are not, I have to say, a very interesting subject matter. Average grades, average intelligence, no particular qualities or talent for anything. If I had to sum you up in a word, I would have to choose "mediocre". Do you have anything to say to that?'

Bucky raised his head. 'Help,' he said flatly. 'I am being dressed down by a man who chops off arms and locks people up in his basement.'

'Ah, no real answer, then. Was that why you became friends with Rogers in the first place? Because even you might look good in comparison?'

His face heated with anger, but he said nothing. _I might not be half the man Steve Rogers is, dumb funny pages and all, but you and all your goons couldn't pack his lunch. Not now, not when he was ten years old and swimming inside a shirt three sizes too big for him, not back when he was a scrap of a kid with a big mouth and who couldn't run up a flight of stairs without either his lungs or his joints killing him_. When you got captured, you didn't answer questions. When your captors were batting that far away from the truth, you let them.

'Did it upset you, his change? I am sure it must have, on some level. It is all right, Sergeant. You can admit to it now. I am the only one here, and who am I going to tell, hmm? No? That is a shame. I was rather hoping we might be able to start off on an honest foot—footing, I mean. Well, you don't have to admit it yet, if it is too hard. But it is the truth, isn't it? I mean, there he was, finally, the hero, the golden boy. Whereas someone like you, well. Yes, of course they would have given you all kinds of little medals if you had gone back. And you made friends easily, didn't you? Or acquaintances, rather. They have a term for this, in the science of psychology, did you know? It is called "superficial charm".'

Bucky had to stop himself from shrugging, or perhaps laughing. Who cared—

_I am invisible I am turning into_

—about being a hero?

'You don't have to answer, Sergeant. But you must at least have wondered why Rogers hasn't come for you yet. He has had enough time by now. But the truth is, he is not even looking. Your family is not looking either. Nor are any of your "friends".' Bucky could hear the inverted commas in Zola's voice. 'Frankly, I think it is a little indecent. The speed they all forgot you with. Maybe it was the fact there never was a body. People say it is harder when there isn't one, you have probably heard it, but it is a lie. A probable, even almost certain yes is easier than a definite one. You can keep—what is the word?—postponing it. There is no grave to visit, no day set aside for the anniversary. You don't even have to mourn. You can just say to yourself that it's early days, that there's still hope, that you're not giving up. And all the while you are carrying on with your new life, new friends, new loved ones. You do not even have to feel guilt. Everyone will tell you how strong you are.'

There was a little burst of static, as though, in some other room, the flesh-and-blood Zola had just brushed the microphone. 'Ah, maybe I am wrong. Maybe it is not everyone, just the people who knew you. Maybe they all got the measure of you, eh?'

Hope. For all his cleverness the dumb fuck had just gone ahead and given Bucky hope. He didn't dare move, sure that Zola would see it on his face, the way he sat. His nose started itching almost immediately, but right now he didn't mind it.

Steve was alive. His family, alive. Dum Dum, Jim Morita, Jacques, Gabe, Falsworth (don't call me Monty), enough of them alive for Zola to say friends, plural; maybe all of them alive, God willing and with a little luck. Peggy and Stark alive, almost certainly. The war had been won and they were all alive and well, at least enough to move on and (but that was Zola's lie) forget him.

If in exchange for all that he had to be the one to face Zola, well, that didn't seem like too high a price to pay.

'No amusing curse words? You're slipping, Sergeant.'

Bucky looked straight at the lens on the wall. 'I've got the measure of you too, Zola.'

He had learned, after Azzano, strapped to that table. The kind of person who didn't know the difference between kicking a cat away and taking it apart still alive to see how it worked.

'Oh, I am sure that is of no consequence at all. All it matters is who _you_ are. Being your Captain America's right hand, following him around, that must have given you a certain purpose. So what are you, without that? When following him brought you to this room? When everything is… stripped away?'

'Barnes, James Buchanan,' Bucky said. 'Sergeant. One-oh-seventh. Three-two-five…' He stumbled there, just for a moment. He could feel the rest of the serial number slipping into the black hole inside his head before he caught it again. 'Three-two-five-five-seven-zero-three-eight.'

Zola's laughter sounded like a spill of needles. 'Oh, Sergeant, it is not so bad here, I assure you. Think of what you would have had to look forward to if it weren't for me. Grubby little children, sour-mouthed wife, pinching every penny, drinking yourself into a stupor. But now, you get to be something extraordinary. Don't forget that.

Perhaps you won't even have to be alone. Do you think your dear Captain would like his own little room here?'

Bucky drew in a cold breath. 'You're a monster, Zola.'

'Ah, yes, I was sure that was what you would say! But as I said before, I read your file. All those fights you used to get into, you will say you were just defending your friend, yes? Stop the other youngsters from—ah, picking on him. I think, though, I think you enjoyed them. You certainly had no problem killing all those men in the war, without a single concern, I am sure. And when you were found and had your surgery, you nearly strangled someone to death. They were doing it to save your life, to stop your mangled arm from killing you. You woke up, and you nearly killed someone. The very first thing you did. So what does that say about _you_, Sergeant? About what you are? Do you know that the procedure amplifies what is already inside? So what will we discover about you, I wonder.'

Bucky's mouth opened, but he didn't answer. He pictured the bars of a cage, a strange bird trapped inside.

_I have to get out of here._

'We are going to do great things together,' Zola said.

* * *

><p><strong>TBC…<strong>

* * *

><p><strong>Author's notes:<strong> Re: Bucky's father, when Bucky refers to his folks in CA:TWS, in my head-canon he's talking about his mother and stepfather. As for his birth father, comics readers can probably guess what the backstory is there, but in any case it will be delved into in future chapters. Some of what Zola says to Bucky in this chapter's last scene draws heavily on what "John Smith" (a serial killer who killed his victims by locking them in little rooms in the middle of nowhere and then screwing with their heads until they lost the will to live; so, well, I guess you can see the relevance…) says in the _Cold Case_ episode _The Road_ (season 5, episode 15). As for what Zola is doing in the USSR and how Hydra found another of its congenial little nests, again I will delve into that a bit more in future chapters. I have assumed that Bucky's metal arm went through several iterations, as it seems logical that they'd modify it as technology improved. Also, I thought of keeping a running tally of all of Zola's lies, omissions, and distortions, but this fic is already long enough as it is. If Zola's manipulative BS were a _Where's Wally?_ puzzle, it would literally be a page of Wallies with just this one lady in a stripy sweater, istg.


	4. Sleep

**4. Sleep**

* * *

><p>At first, staying awake was the hardest part. They were dosing him, somehow, so that no matter what he did to try to stay conscious—talking out loud, pacing his cell, pinching himself until he bruised and bled—he would always black out sooner or later, then wake up from his death-sleep queasy and terrified, his limbs leaden.<p>

First attempt: he tested the walls, first with his real hand, then with the metal one. He was strong, but the walls were stronger. Even slamming them with all his weight didn't put a dent on them, just on him.

He didn't dream. When he was a little kid he'd had to have his tonsils removed (still groggy from the ether, he had asked Dad when it was going to happen, only to be told that it was already over and he'd been very brave) and this was the same kind of sleep, where you blinked and a chunk of time was cut out without you noticing it. As a kid he had been annoyed at having a whole day of play taken away. Now he was half-furious, half-sick. Whenever he woke up he checked himself thoroughly, trying to see if there was anything else they'd stolen along with the missing hours.

Sometimes he found bruises, needle pricks, ligature marks. They were always very faint, but he knew he couldn't gauge time by them. He tried once, knowing he healed faster now. He hit his wrist on the edge of the cot, hard, until there was a reddening lump the size of a chicken egg, then did the same with his thigh, for comparison. He started counting away each minute, one to sixty, hoping to get a crude idea of how long it would take for the bruises to come and go. He might be able to tell time by the marks on him whenever he woke up, a chart in purples and yellows and faded greens.

_Bucky Barnes, the human stopwatch_. He laughed, jagged-edged, eyes fixed all the while on the places where he'd injured himself, unable to shake the feeling that looking away or even blinking too long would cause another blackout to happen.

He didn't look away. Maybe he didn't even blink. They made him black out anyway, and when he came to the bruises he'd given himself were gone.

He tried not to think about what other things they could do to him while he was unconscious, things whose marks would fade before he woke up, things that wouldn't leave any marks at all.

He thought about it anyway.

Second attempt: he tried the hair's breadth gaps around what had to be some kind of panel or door. There were no rivets, no screws. He tried to work his real fingers in, ended up ripping two of his fingernails in half. He tried the metal fingers next as he held his throbbing right hand to his chest. The metal hand kept slipping. When he managed to get a grip, it was like taking a sledgehammer to a mountain: a lot of noise for nothing.

He could keep track of how many times he'd been awake, at least. Twenty-three. As soon as he stopped shaking and the nausea receded enough for thought, he would reach for the last number and add one more, clasp it and roll it around in his mind like he had sometimes seen Mrs Rogers do with a rosary wound around her fingers. He might not know how long he spent unconscious, but he could count out the minutes and the hours he spent awake, repeat them to himself under his breath as he paced the cell. It added up to almost ten days. They never allowed him to be awake for very long.

(Not ten days.)

Ten weeks.

Ten months.

Ten years.

His body might not change on the outside, but he could feel the time inside, where they couldn't touch unless they sliced him apart. Bone-weary. Heartsick. He understood now.

Third attempt: the vent at the bottom of one of the walls. It was only slightly bigger than his hand (the real one), but there was only a metal grille covering it, and he could manage that just fine. It was a little tricky, getting the metal fingers in the right place, but once he did, he tore the cover off like a piece of tissue paper. The hole inside the vent was not much bigger than the opening itself, but, lying on his back, he managed to work the metal hand in, then slid it deeper inch by inch, so slow he could feel the beads of sweat forming on his forehead. _Easy. Easy_. After maybe half a foot, the hole twisted upwards. The metal arm didn't feel pain and it barely felt pressure, so he bent it as much as he could inside the cramped space and forced it up, tried to guide himself by the sound of metal on metal. He had only a few inches' leeway; close to the shoulder the arm got too big to fit in the opening.

He sensed the crackle of electricity before he heard it. There was a tenth of a second before the floor turned into a live wire and he tried to yank his arm out but it was _stuck_, it was stuck and all he could do was thrash on the floor, hear his body slam against the tiles and the wall, choke on the burning stench. He screamed for a while before they made him black out.

He left the vent alone after that. Mostly, he left it alone.

They had to be feeding him and watering him while he was out, because he didn't feel hunger, or thirst, or a full bladder. And they must be cleaning him up, shaving him, trimming his hair. He supposed they were doing it so he couldn't gauge time by things like his stubble, but the thought—the certainty—of them touching him made him sick. He tried to kick the thought away. It kept turning up like a bad penny.

His body changed on the inside. He lay on the cot and looked at the lighting strips on the ceiling, until his eyes burned and the thread of thoughts (twenty-four times, three hours, forty-five minutes, fifteen seconds, Brooklyn Steve War London Paris twenty-four times, three hours, forty-five minutes, thirty seconds) snapped, just for one moment. His head filled up with the places where the skin had melted, where the bones had settled into different shapes. Above him the lights turned blue, four parallel strips of sky, and in his new form he could crawl up the walls, squeeze through the gaps and fly away.

Sometimes the metal arm was there when he woke up.

Sometimes it wasn't.

The first time it wasn't, he peeled off the bandage on his shoulder. The gauze had been fixed with some kind of liquid; he ripped strips of skin away. The flesh on his shoulder still had metal embedded in it, edges buried deep, scraping bone and nerves when he tried to pull them out. There was a ring in the spot where the bone socket had been, like an open mouth full of steel fangs. Seams where his flesh had been sewn to the metal. He could smell disinfectant and cordite, a lingering trace of pus.

The times when the arm was there, he tried to figure it out. He tried, until his fingers were bruised and throbbing, to take it off. He tried, when that didn't work, to learn how to use it. Flex. Pull. Twist. Bend. The metal fingers were the hardest part. The rest of the arm was mostly smooth and entirely cold. The fingers were clunky, like something from an _Amazing Stories_ cover. When he moved them they made little clicking noises, jerked out of his control.

One time he found himself scratching an itch on his wrist as he paced.

The left wrist, the one made of metal.

Just one time.

Three times. No more.

At least there was no pain, or at least not much. He could deal with it.

Just like he could deal with the itching, or the sensation that he'd been lying on his left arm a long time, and it was pin-and-needling back to life.

Fourth attempt: the walls again, but this time he was cleverer about it. He ripped the cot from its moorings on the floor, which was easy enough to do with the metal arm and a little effort, then dragged it as far back as he could before he rammed it full speed against the spot where the door (panel, opening, whatever) sat on the wall. Once, twice, three times, over and over until he lost count and his skin was slick with sweat, a vice of pain around the places in his left shoulder where the metal met flesh. One end of the cot was mangled, the metal frame twisted into an insect-like shape, the bare bones of some long-dead monster. The wall was covered with scuff marks, but that was all he'd achieved. Scuff marks. Not even a dent.

When he woke up again the marks on the wall were gone. The cot was intact again.

Everything he did was washed away.

Bad penny thoughts: his metal hand around Zola's throat, squeezing. Zola's feet dangling helplessly off the ground. Zola's eyes bulging out, his tongue flicking about, the skin on his face purpling. The colours were vivid enough to make him sick.

Bucky knew he wasn't supposed to enjoy it. He hadn't enjoyed any of his kills, all as quick and clean as he could make them. Maybe the sad bastards he'd killed hadn't deserved it, though given who and what they served, they probably had. Didn't matter either way. It had all boiled down to him or them, Steve or them, the Commandos or them. It was a war. He'd had something to do, no matter how hard. And no matter how hard, he'd done it. He wasn't supposed to enjoy it, but he was going to enjoy the look of surprise on Zola's face, the noises he'd make as his windpipe was crushed. Sometimes Bucky let the bad penny thought turn up again and again until his mouth was full of rust and copper.

Fifth attempt, sixth attempt.

He sat on the floor and cursed himself for being too dumb to figure this out.

But he kept trying. At least he kept trying. At least no one would say that when—Hydra? the Nazis? the General? just Zola, keeping strange trophies in a secret room?—stuck James Buchanan Barnes in the hole, he didn't do his damnedest to get the hell out. 'Give you a medal for that alone,' he told himself, and laughed.

He did laugh, sometimes. It never sounded good.

Hurting himself didn't work. He tried enough times to know they would just knock him out and fix him.

Three other attempts taught him that sometimes the ceiling was also electrified. Sometimes.

Next attempt: breaking open the lighting strips in the ceiling and using the wires to start a fire. He tore a scrap of fabric off his pants to use as a makeshift torch, and when that didn't take he tried pressing the thin mattress against the exposed wires. It didn't work, but he knew it wouldn't, he wasn't an idiot: he needed fuel and he didn't have any.

'Unless that metal arm of yours is full of motor oil,' his mouth said.

_Wouldn't that be something._

_You could pull those wires up there and put them in your mouth._

Yeah, he could do that. This was probably real current, not whatever they were using to bat him around like a cat working over a mouse. It might very well kill him before they had enough time to get to him. Or one could hope, at least.

It'd mean pulling out the wires. Having to touch them.

'You're scared.'

_Am not._

'What are you, eight years old? You're backing away, you gotta be scared.'

'Fine. I'm scared. I'm a huge scaredy-cat. I don't wanna die. Are you happy now?' he yelled at the walls. '_Are you fucking happy?_'

The walls didn't answer.

There was that sick-making hum of electricity starting up, but this time it wasn't coming from the floor or the ceiling, this time it was coming from his goddamn _arm_, and he tried screaming 'I didn't mean it! I didn't mean it!' but that didn't stop them.

He tried just staying awake.

There had to be some kind of gas they were using to knock him out, something he couldn't see or smell. It might be coming from the vent, but it couldn't just be coming from there, because one time, even though he didn't like going near the vent, he still covered it up with the mattress, and another time he took the white pyjama pants he always woke up with and wadded them up on the grille, and none of that made any difference.

Maybe the gas was coming in through tiny holes in the walls or the ceiling, too small for him to see. He knew there had to be holes because he tried covering up the dead eye lens on the wall so they couldn't see what he was doing inside his cell but they always knew anyway.

The fourth time he covered up the lens the electricity came back on. He stopped doing it after that.

Maybe the metal arm had something inside that made him sleep, and that was why he woke up wearing it more and more. It was easier for them to do it that way. It wasn't like he could pull the thing off. He'd tried.

He tried breathing only once every minute. He tried being so still and silent that maybe he could hear the hiss of the gas, smell the first whiff.

Didn't work.

Sometimes he woke with his head throbbing and his skin clammy. There was a smell that clung to him for a while, almost too faint to detect. He wasn't sure what it was. It was a little like the smell in a funeral home. The sweetness of overripe fruit. Sour milk. Whenever he smelled it after waking up he knew they had done something to him while he was out, something worse than usual.

Another attempt. He'd stopped counting them. He stood on the cot, smashed the glass cover on one of the lighting strips. Climbed down, riffled through the shards until he found, guiding himself by the cuts on his fingers, the sharpest one. Pressed it against his throat. Closed his eyes. Swallowed. Swallowed again, until his mouth was dry. Found enough guts somewhere. Pressed the shard a little deeper. Sliced.

If he'd been lucky enough not to die, he had planned—

_too chickenshit to die_

—to wake up in some kind of sick bay and take it from there. Instead he had woken up in the cell again. The lighting strips were intact. He couldn't feel a scar in his throat, no matter how slowly he ran his fingertips over the skin.

The cell kept changing around him. He could tell because sometimes it was twelve feet long and sometimes it was eleven and a half. Sometimes the lens on the wall was a little off-centre, or higher than before. Sometimes he would gouge out marks on the underside of the cot, where no one could see, and when he woke up again they'd be gone.

Sometimes they'd still be there, though, so maybe he just imagined all that. Maybe he'd imagined cutting himself, too, dreaming awake. After all, the last thing he remembered just before he passed out had been lying on the floor, blood pooling underneath him, but instead of a bright arterial red it'd been black and thick as motor oil.

_You've been awake more than twenty-six times, haven't you, Bucky? A lot more._

'I'm sorry.' He knelt, eyes closed, forehead pressed against the edge of the cot. He wasn't sure what he was doing. Praying, maybe. 'I'm not sure what it is I did, but whatever it was, I'm sorry. Please. Please get me out of here, and I promise…'

_What?_

_Don't worry, kiddo, I'll write to you every chance I get._

_I'm with you till the end of the line, pal._

_I'm sorry, Dad. I promise I won't get into so much trouble anymore._

Hadn't he always broken all his promises?

Once he sat on the cot, careful not to put his bare feet on the floor, and saw a shape dart under the skin of his ankle. He picked at the skin until it tore. The shape wriggled under the metal fingers. Something poked out of the flesh. He pulled at it. It was an insect wing, blood-stained.

He wasn't asleep, just dreaming awake.

He was dead. Maybe when you died you didn't go anywhere and you didn't just rot. Maybe instead you got stuck. You got stuck in a little room like this one, and you spoke to other dead people for a while until they too fell silent. None of this was real. He could see himself, pinned to a cork. Trapped under a pane of glass.

Maybe dying didn't end you, it just drove you mad.

:=:

'Sergeant.'

It took him a few seconds to realise the voice in the speaker was real. At first he thought it was only a burst of static, the metal groaning, his mind filling the silence.

'Sergeant.'

:=:

'I am very glad to see you have decided not to be so stubborn anymore.'

They hadn't made him black out. They had given him something that made him unable to move, but they hadn't made him black out. He'd floated above his motionless, unfeeling body as it was wheeled into a room, trying to retain enough presence of mind to memorise the place's layout. It was difficult: everything was both foggy and too bright, left and right swaying back and forth, swirls of fluorescent light. Much easier to just float, even if he tried his hardest not to.

The room he was in now was friendlier (than what?). It smelled of cigarette smoke, not disinfectant. There were only a few people, tables bearing strange instruments made of metal and glass. In the middle there was a dentist's chair, and they hauled his dead weight onto it. There were all kinds of screens and panels full of fiddly buttons around it. Maybe it was going to take flight.

'Fortunately you only delayed us a few days before deciding to cooperate, that's very good.' Zola, flipping switches as he talked. Zola, it was always Zola. _Not a few days. Didn't. Not cooperating._ Bucky couldn't flinch or pull away, not with his body turned to concrete and jelly—

But it was—

Another person's voice. Flesh and blood. Zola's. It was still… soothing. Something.

Not crazy. Not yet.

English. The people in the room were speaking in English, more or less. '—more minutes until we can start calibration—' '—titrate the suxamethonium—' Machines hummed away while things were done to Bucky's body, needles sunk into his skin, electrodes taped to his chest, his face. The man who did that didn't look at him. He was fastening the wires to something invisible. Threads of silver light glinted off his hair.

The chair's head-rest was pulled back and his gaze landed on a row of clocks just below the ceiling. A painted shape sat in the middle, maybe an eagle, maybe just an eddy of black stains and lines. The letters underneath stilled, swam, stilled; they wouldn't settle enough for him to read them. In the corner, almost out of sight—

An edge of fabric. Stars and stripes.

_Stars and stripes! _

A machine beeped faster. There was a swirl of words he didn't understand. Was he home? God, was he _home_? He remembered shipping out and Italy and Azzano and the things after Azzano and Austria and Germany but then there was a blank there was _nothing_ no not nothing little flashes hurt like needles glass shards and God if only he could _think_…

_Zola is evil. Zola is evil. Zola did this to you and he is evil. Don't trust Zola._

His fingers twitched. Sensation was trickling back. He tried to move his head, but it had been wedged in place. He hadn't felt the restraints being applied.

'Oh, Sergeant, please try to calm down.' Zola stepped in front of him and drew a cigarette from his pocket. He stood so close Bucky could see his colourless eyes behind the wire-frame glasses. 'You are breathing so fast you are going to do yourself an injury. Perhaps a little puff of smoke will make you feel a little better…' He paused, shook his head to himself and put the cigarette away. 'No, it is not too healthy for you. This—' He stepped out of sight. When he returned he held a syringe in his hand and grabbed a loop of tubing connected to Bucky's arm. '—is better.' In went the needle. 'Don't worry, in a few moments you will be feeling much better. Very relaxed.'

_No. No no no no no._

'His metabolism is too fast for the scopolamine, Professor,' a voice said where Bucky couldn't see. 'Should we—'

'No, no, that won't be necessary for now,' Zola said, and turned back to him. 'You are going to behave, aren't you, Sergeant?'

He wanted to say _screw you_, but he could barely even think it. The familiar hum of electricity started up and he didn't need either fear or pain darting through him—by now his body clenched on its own, by instinct. Only his flesh was dead, numb except for the frantic twitch of his fingers. His eyes moved so fast the room turned into a blur.

'Oh no, please don't cry, it is very embarrassing.' Zola patted his knee awkwardly. Bucky's eyes stilled. He stared at Zola's face, unable to blink. He could feel the air struggling to enter his lungs, could hear each pained wheeze. His own flesh was choking him. 'Come, to look at you one would think we were some kind of, of evil-doers who kidnapped you from your bed. But in reality you have been treated very nicely, especially considering how badly you have behaved. You should have been resting in your bed so you'd be ready for all the things we have to do, instead of all the foolishness you've been—'

He was drowning. His vision tunnelled.

'Sergeant, _calm yourself_.'

A direct command, even in that voice. His breathing slowed a fraction.

There was a shrill whistle. Bucky recognised it as a telephone's ring with only some difficulty.

The room quietened. The loudest sounds were his gasps.

'Yes, he is here. Professor.'

'One minute,' Zola said, now busy doing something to Bucky's chest and head. He could no longer hear his breathing. Instead his head filled with rhythmic thumps as Zola walked away.

'Hello? Yes, this is him. … No, we have not begun yet, we are still doing all the preparation work.'

_Thump. Thump_. He stared at the clocks, stared at the button-covered panels in front of him, where he could almost see his own reflection.

'Yes, I think it is safe to assume— Oh, as far as the General is concerned, I imagine he thinks we are in Odessa. …'

_Think. Thump. Thump. God,_ think_. Thump. Thump._ The room was full of Americans but Zola was talking about Odessa.

'Yes, I see. …. Ha, that would be very amusing. … No, Director Carter would have to authorise it, I believe it has been brought to her attention already. … No, no, Mr Stark's input would not be necessary for that. … Yes? … Oh no, most cooperative, I have administered his pre-op injection already and—'

_Director Carter. Mr Stark._

_Director Carter? Director Carter?_

'—not until the animal tests, no. … Yes, I will believe it when I see it. … And very much the same to you, good-bye!'

_Director Carter and Mr Stark?_

"Pre-op"?

Had Zola said "pre-op"?

Thoughts fired inside his skull. _Director Carter could be anyone! Lots of people named Carter! But he said Stark!_ Zola's face appeared in front of him again, filling up the world.

'Let us not waste time, Sergeant. We are all nice and ready.'

'Sta,' Bucky managed to dribble out, barely a sound. There must be drool spilling down his chin, but he couldn't feel it.

'Start, yes, we will start,' Zola said, then frowned before looking pleased again. 'Oh, you mean "Stark"! I had forgotten you know Miss Carter and Mr Stark. Yes, your friends are very pleased with the project.'

_Thump. Thump._ They couldn't know. It was all some big con. _Thump. Thump._ Only… how had he ended up here?

Zola turned around. 'You can start the film camera.' He stepped aside and lowered an articulated lever. In the gaps between the instruments Bucky could see another blind black eye, staring at him. _Thump. Thump. Thump._

'Conditioning and calibration session zero-zero-two-alpha, beginning at sixteen hundred hours and—oh, twenty five minutes,' Zola said, not to him. 'Followed by modulation of amygdalic activity, followed by bilateral and bifrontal sinewave stimulation.'

There was a needle on the tip of the lever, pointed right at his face. Bucky tried to look away, but his eyes were slack now. Whatever Zola had given him had turned his body into dead meat again. Only his breath quickened, out of his control. The camera whirred and clicked away.

Zola turned around and guided the needle closer and closer to his face, until the silver tip was in front of his right eye. It looked as big as a razor blade. Bucky tried to blink, but it was too late for that. Another pair of hands—not Zola's—pushed two clamps against the edges of his eye; he could feel his eyelids being stretched.

'I am afraid I will have to inject the paralytic into your eyes. Do not worry, you will not feel a thing.'

_Please_, he tried to say. His tongue and throat betrayed him. Only half a word came out, garbled. Zola leaned down towards him. Bucky could smell the faint aroma of tobacco and soap clinging to his skin.

'"Please"? Don't be tiresome, Sergeant,' Zola said, then straightened up and nodded. Another pair of rubber-gloved hands pushed Bucky's lips open and slid a tube into his mouth, stilling his tongue. His throat filled with a sweet, chemical taste.

_Thumpthumpthump._ The needle moved towards his eye.

He was breathing so fast he should have blacked out for everything that happened after that, but he wasn't that lucky.

:=:

Fire.

Red.

The images stuck even as they dissolved into linoleum, bare walls. The things he saw couldn't be real, though, because booted feet stepped right through them, through spatters of brain matter and bloodied hair clumping in drain holes. Not real. Just pictures. Not real.

He was being carried. No. He was walking. Half-walking, half-dragging. Dark shapes of guns on the two men pulling him forward. He could do something to them if he wanted to. He was sure of it. Something. Couldn't remember what. Pain started to seep in, grinding, gnawing. That made it even harder to think. Harder, even if the blood—not real, _not_ real, not _real_—on the walls was fading.

They put him in a room. He didn't remember the room, but when they let him go and he fell to his knees he knew straight away there was something wrong with the floor. It looked normal. He still had to get out of it. He crawled over to the bed. Hands off the—

_GET OFF IT_

—floor. He had to get his hands off the floor because when he looked at his skin he saw it blister and crack. Not real. That was also Not Real.

'Help him onto the bed.'

The men rolled him up (faces, he didn't want to look at their faces) and lifted him onto the bed. He didn't care about that. He cared about the voice. He knew the voice. He knew the accent (accent?). And then he didn't care about the voice anymore. He was going to throw up. Bile burned the back of his throat. When it happened he was going to puke a kidney, a chunk of liver.

A lung.

A heart.

He didn't vomit. He just spewed out a string of yellowish fluid. Snot-like, not snot. It dribbled down his chin, splattered on his neck. Burned his nose and made him cough. That was all. He knew he ought to move, even if he didn't know why. All his body managed to do was lie still and hurt. He patted his head. A bulky bandage sat around it.

Surgery. Hospital.

His left arm was made of metal. It had always been made of metal.

The men didn't look like hospital orderlies, they looked like guards. Guns holstered, but ready to spring out. Shoot. (Bite.)

'How are you feeling, Sergeant?'

Sergeant! Yes, a military hospital.

There had been uniforms in the pictures, weapons.

He recognised the doctor who stood over him.

He was called—

'Hurt me,' his mouth squeezed out.

The doctor smiled. 'I should hope that was a complaint and not a request, Sergeant!'

He was called—

'But rest assured that we have not hurt you,' the doctor went on. 'All the procedures were necessary and you will feel better from now on. And you will also no longer hurt yourself, or want to hurt yourself, or disobey direct orders. There are some things about you that make you different from everyone else, that is why you volunteered, why you are such a good candidate for the project. Unfortunately there were also some… abnormalities we needed to correct. Now that is all over. Isn't it wonderful?'

Wonderful, yes.

_Zola!_ The doctor's name was Zola. He had done something to him. Something.

'I know you must feel very, ah—nauseous, and there might perhaps be some pain,' the doctor said, and leaned down. Tufts of dirt-blond hair, steel-blue eyes behind round glasses. Pudgy face, starting to get lined with age.

He could smell something but it wasn't coming from the doctor, it was coming from him. Vomit and bleach.

The pictures were back. Blood haloes. Skin tearing. Everything went away when he blinked. The doctor was still right. There was something wrong with him. He took the pills from the other man's palm. Said 'Thank you.'

_Zola. Zolazolazola. Don't trust him._

_?_

'Oh, you are most welcome.' The doctor sounded happy. He knew he wanted the doctor to sound happy. It reassured him as much as the pills. They'd left a bitter taste in his mouth. He'd had to chew and swallow them without—

_a glass remember a glass the glass_

—water, but he could feel them working already, melting the pain away. He could think better now.

_Bucky._

The word went up like a flare inside the blackness in his mind, where the bad things must have been. Bucky. That was—his name?

'We will leave you to rest, Sergeant.' The doctor had walked away to the door. Bucky—_Bucky, Bucky, my name is Bucky yes_—wanted to raise his head to see him leave. It was too heavy. 'You should have a nice long sleep.'

_Sometime._

'You will not be making a nuisance of yourself after we went through all this trouble with you, will you?'

No. No no no. He would be good. He wanted to be good.

The doctor and the two (orderlies)(guards) men left. The door slammed shut behind them.

He closed his eyes. No, he couldn't sleep. He stared at the single lamp hanging from the ceiling. The pills took away the pain, and that made him—

That made him—

_Bucky. Buck. Buchanan. James Buchanan something. Baines? Barnes._

He got up, but his body only half-obeyed him. He slammed knees-first on the floor instead. The pain was dulled, a slow burst of deep purple. White flickered behind his eyelids. He understood there was an emptiness. A space. A chasm, inside his head. They had reached in and cut things off until he could only feel the edges. They throbbed like bad teeth.

If he pulled the bandage away his head would break apart, spill onto the floor in a thousand pieces.

'God. Oh god.'

He saw himself, sitting on the floor and drawing quick little panicked breaths. It didn't bother him that much. It was like the pictures, barbed wire thorns sinking into eyeballs and tongues, loops of intestine spilling from open bellies. They were bad, the things inside, very bad, but they couldn't touch him. Couldn't.

He watched as the body staggered to its feet, swayed, and hobbled towards a wall. The metal arm hung limply at the body's side. It couldn't be moved. The body—_he_ fell again, this time on his butt, said 'ow', and hiccuped.

The wall. The wall was blank. It was off-white and the whole inside of his head was black, as black as it got. He had to take the things out while he still could. Pin them to the wall so he would remember.

His fingers tightened on the metal arm. It might be useless, but there were edges. Sharp enough that if he pressed hard enough he could rip the skin of his palm open, gauge bloody furrows on the mound of flesh at the base of his thumb.

The first thing on the wall was a red palm print. He got the hang of it soon enough, making more slices in his hand and arm when he needed more ink. The letters were loopy, shaky, switched, upside down. It didn't matter. Names, dates, places. _New York. James Buchanan Barnes. 22 December._ His birthday? _Gabe. Wendy._ He wasn't sure who Gabe was, but Wendy was his mother, he remembered he had a mother. _Brooklyn. War. Cyclone. Flying car. Brushes. George._

_The doctor's name is Zola._

_They do things to you._

_Steve. Steven Grant Rogers._

_Steve is coming for you._

He had filled almost a quarter of the wall by the time he heard the crying.

* * *

><p><strong>TBC…<strong>

* * *

><p><strong>Author's notes:<strong> In some of the comics Bucky's arm attaches directly to skin, but in the MCU it looks like a series of shoulder/chest/back muscles have been sliced right through, given the scarring we see in CA:TWS, so I have the arm attach to a metal socket embedded in Bucky's shoulder. I'm sure the Hydra scientists could improve on that, but since it would be purely for Bucky's benefit they don't exactly, you know, care. Electroshock/electroconvulsive therapy (note that, as per standard medical procedure IRL, Zola has administered it with Bucky under anaesthesia and with the aid of muscle relaxants… this time) does indeed frequently cause memory loss, but this tends to affect just the memories from the weeks/months preceding the treatment, and there is typically gradual improvement afterwards. However, Zola is using doses and techniques—like having simultaneous bilateral and bifrontal placing of the electrodes, not to mention doing a bunch of sf procedures at the same time—that would probably give Bucky massive brain damage if it weren't for the protective effects of I Can't Believe It's Not Super-Soldier Serum. Bucky's mother is called Winifred in the comics, so Wendy sounded like a reasonable family nickname, following the release of _Peter Pan_ in 1904. Bucky's birthday, both in the MCU and the comics, is on the 10th of March, btw.


	5. Reflexive

**Author's Note:** The Russian translations in this chapter were kindly provided by **boot_from_cd** and **alley_skywalker**, with additional comments and suggestions by **irien24**, **liilliil**, **migmit**, and **sandwichwarrior**. Thank you all for your help!

This chapter has an amazing illustration by **dark_roast**, you can find her art post here: archiveofourown dotorg / works / 2515286

* * *

><p><strong>5. Reflexive<strong>

* * *

><p>It was soft. At first, he wondered if it was just the buzzing of a fly, the sound of pipes settling down. After a short while, though, it was clear it was a person, maybe a child. It was coming from the other wall. He got up—stronger, he was getting stronger—and moved towards it.<p>

The crying wafted up from a vent. He knew he shouldn't go near it. The knot of ice in his stomach told him something very bad would happen if he went near it.

He couldn't help himself. He had to do something. If he didn't, the crying would rattle inside his eggshell skull until his head broke open. He kneeled on the floor by the vent. Blood dripped from his hand and splashed on the floor in a strange pattern.

Nothing bad happened. His heart quietened, just a little. The crying grew louder, bounced off the vent's sides. It was a child for sure. Bucky edged as close to the vent as he could. 'Hello?'

The weeping stopped for a few seconds, then started up again, lower than before.

'Can you hear me?'

The voice from the wall didn't answer, but he was sure now that it was a child, probably a little girl. Children didn't belong here. He wasn't sure what _here_ was—it was some kind of hospital, and it was _familiar_—but he knew there shouldn't be any children here.

'_Peux-tu m'entendre?_' he said. '_Kannst du mich hören?_' He knew left from right, he knew the sun rose in the East, he knew how to say those things and what they meant.

The girl in the vent whispered. He swallowed and put his ear as close to the cover as he dared.

'Help me.' The words were punctuated by an echoing rattle, as though something was moving about far below. 'Help me.'

'I'll help you, OK?' he said into the vent, hoping it was loud enough and his voice wasn't shaking too hard for her to hear. 'Don't be scared. Just stay put and I'll find you.'

The weeping started again, more desperate this time. Maybe the Bad Thing the vent did was happening, but it was happening to her instead of him. 'You can't—you can't do that,' he cried out at the ceiling. 'You can't keep children in here, just…'

… _people like me_.

He had to go to the door. He had to go to the door and open it and step out. He had to find the little girl. He stood up, wobbly, took one, two, three steps towards the door. Ice coiled in the small of his back. Open the door. It's no big deal. Open the door. Try the lock. He reached out towards it. His hand shook so bad it sprayed dollops of blood. Open the door. His heart raced. Open—

When he touched it, the door swung open with a little squeak of metal. He staggered out. He couldn't feel his body again, which was good, but he had to hold on to the walls for balance, which was bad. His hand left a streak of blood behind it.

The corridor outside branched into three other corridors. He peered into one. More corridors, all the same beige walls and linoleum floor.

His palm itched. When he glanced at it he saw a big strip of skin hanging down to his wrist, pink-streaked with blood, exposing a patch of flesh. A swell of nausea rose into his throat.

The metal arm was still useless, a load pulling him out of balance, but with some effort he managed to catch the end of the skin flap with the fingers of his right hand. He tugged, and winced at the sting as the skin began to rip free. It sloughed off, nearly translucent. He looked down as the skin dropped to the floor. More patches had begun to peel off; he could feel them itch, see the spots where they'd stained his hospital clothes. He took off his pyjama top, very carefully, then began working on the loose skin on his stomach and his right shoulder.

There were barbs under the exposed flesh. He tugged on one and felt the joint in his shoulder grind and shift. The barb began to slide out. He could feel it tear through his muscles. It felt like a bone splinter but it was black, and sharp. It twitched against his fingers as he tried to dig it out…

:=:=:=:

'… clean it up.'

He blinked. He was in the room. The door was closed.

It was the doctor who'd spoken, from a screen in the wall. The picture was fuzzy.

He—

How did he—

_James. Something_. The thought floated up through fog, then burst. _Buck_.

'Clean it up.'

Somewhere else. He had been—

His neck bent down, slow with rust. There was a bucket of water, a sponge. Under the light the film of soap on the water shimmered like dragonfly wings.

He turned back to the doctor on the screen, uncomprehending. The doctor told him things, at least. He was sure the doctor told him things.

'You have spoiled your room, like a little child, or an animal,' the doctor said. He (another balloon-thought: _Bucky. Zola._ Pop.) looked around.

A wall was spattered with red paint. Only it wasn't paint, it was blood. His blood. He had put the words on the wall because they had stolen them out of his head.

He got to his feet, still swaying but suddenly strong with rage. 'What did you do to me? _Where's the girl_?'

The doctor—_Zola, he's Zola_—frowned. 'What girl?'

'Don't lie! I know who you are, Zola. You—' That tug at the edge of a black hole again. God, why couldn't he _remember_? 'You've done things to me. You're keeping me here and…'

The vent. The vent where he'd heard the girl. It was gone.

He looked around the room frantically, as though that would make the vent show up, but of course it didn't. There was no vent. No girl. No corridors. There was only the room.

_No. No_. His head hurt. He reached up to touch the bandage but there was no bandage. His fingers probed around his scalp, looking for a wound, a scar, but there wasn't any. 'You… operated on me. Did some kind of surgery.'

God, he had to _think_.

'Do not be absurd, Sergeant. You invented it all,' Zola—_but is his name really Zola?_—said. 'Not on purpose, of course. It is what we call a delusion. Your mind is sick and therefore invented this surgery and this… girl. It is the same, ah—problem that led you to deface the wall. Rest assured that it is for your own good that you should clean it up.' The doctor leaned forward and his black and white face almost filled the screen. 'Come, now. I am asking you to do something very easy. Simply pick up the—'

He didn't hear the rest of the doctor's sentence. Pain shot up his left shoulder, dull at first, then sharpening to razor edges. He was on fire. He couldn't breathe. He dropped to the floor, air escaping his throat.

'What's wrong?' Zola said.

The pain snaked around his throat. He squirmed on the floor. The room was spinning, his vision turning black. He tried to get the metal arm off, before it burned a hole through his flesh, but his hand right hand just clenched uselessly, the skin stained red. 'I can't—' he spluttered. He was going to pass out.

'Breathe, Sergeant,' the doctor said. 'Relax.'

He gasped, helpless. 'I—I can—'

'You can if you simply calm yourself.'

A big gulp of air rushed into his lungs. The pain still crushed him like a vice but it receded a little, gave him room to breathe. Air wheezed in. He gulped it so fast he felt even more light-headed than before.

'Please calm down, Sergeant.' Zola sounded very calm himself. 'Count to three before you release each breath. One, two, three, very simple. One, two, three. Yes, that is it. Just one, two, three.'

He couldn't help but follow the doctor's instructions. It was easy. Air filled his lungs again. The pain began to fade, until it was only a grind in his left shoulder, under the metal. 'What did you do to me?'

'Me? Come, Sergeant, clearly I have done nothing. You could see me all along. In fact, I have almost never touched you since the day you volunteered.'

'You used some switch or…' He trailed off, swallowed. His lungs still ached. He hadn't seen Zola press any buttons, but that didn't mean anything—did it? He looked at the metal arm, as though the answer would inscribe itself there in fire letters, but of course there was nothing. Only mute steel.

His head. Something had happened to his head.

'Sergeant, you are sick. You know that it is healthy to listen to me but all the—problems in your mind will not allow you to do so. The conflict creates the nervous reaction. It is called a psychosomatic phenomenon. It means your mind creates the physical effect. But it is all imaginary, Sergeant.' He stopped to light a cigarette. 'Now. I am telling you this as a scientist and as someone who very much wants you to become healthy. For your sake, Sergeant, clean it up.'

He shook his head.

The doctor took a puff of his cigarette, unhurried. 'We can be here all day, Sergeant.'

It didn't take all day. He wasn't sure how long it took. His eyes stung. His head was hollow. Holey. His body ached, but not so much that he couldn't bear it, not so much that he couldn't have held on not to so much that he shouldn't have _shut up shut up just shut up_. His hand shook and the letters swam in and out of sight as he ran the wet sponge over them. Pink rivulets dripped to the floor.

He was sick. Not sick to his stomach (although he was). Not feverish (although he was). Just sick.

'You see how reasonable you can be, Sergeant?' the doctor said.

:=:=:=:

They kept taking things from him. He would wake up with new holes inside his head, as though his memories were a moth-eaten fabric. He dragged himself to the wall, filled it with his blood again. Each word a fragment, and the words didn't connect because the fragments didn't connect. City streets. _New York?_ Girl. _Sister?_ Steve, he remembered Steve, only sometimes he was a little boy lying on a hospital bed, face flushed, hands pale as the sheets, and sometimes he was a grown man and he—

_barnes bucky barnes james buchanan barnes come on remember hold on to that_

—was the one lying down and burning up. Black and white. _Real?_ Brushing someone's hair, brown and long. _Real, maybe?_ Going over a ball game play by play, even all the stuff the Lip (who?) had said. _Why?_ He couldn't come. _Where? Who?_ He switched on the radio, but it wasn't a radio, it was a Victrola, and it was in London. _London? Real?_

He put it all on the walls with the ink he got from his flesh. Sometimes he couldn't turn the little pieces into words and sometimes the words didn't link up together, like pieces from ten different puzzles, but he had to do it. If he did it, he could stitch it all up together later. If he did it, every time he woke up with another hole inside his head maybe he could look at the wall and find something to fill it up.

He had come from somewhere. He hadn't been in this room forever.

_Real?_

Sometimes he woke up with straps holding him in place. Gloved fingers pushed pills into his mouth.

They were for his own good. He would feel better after taking them.

They left a bitter taste in his tongue and after he swallowed them the things on the wall floated away like balloons.

:=:=:=:

He could think clearly. For once he could think clearly.

'Come on.'

He could hear someone crying, in another cell. He would get them out and then they would get away from here.

He used his hand, the metal one, the strong one, to break the lock on the door, then stepped into the corridor outside. He was weak—something he didn't remember had been done to him and his muscles felt like jelly—but if he just kept staggering forward, he would make it. He knew he would make it.

'Hang on,' he muttered. 'I'll come get you. Just hang on.'

The corridors looped in on each other, led only to dead ends. He tried to guide himself by the crying, but it had turned into whimpering now, barely audible, and he was no longer standing but crawling, and after a while he was still.

_Come on. Think. You can still think._

There was a wetness in his ear. He touched it and his fingers came down smeared with red.

'Can you hear me?' his voice was hoarse, as though he hadn't used it in a very long time. 'If you can hear me, please answer me!' he shouted. Might as well shout.

A crackle started up in the floor in front of him.

He jerked backwards, struck the wall, then crawled away as fast as he could. He could barely use his limbs and didn't know where he was in the maze, but he had left a trail of bloodspots on the floor. He scrambled to follow those, his flesh turned to jelly. The hum in the floor and walls crept just behind him. Darts of pain hit his feet and hand. He tried to go faster, faster, fast, so hard he has scraping his skin on the floor, but it wasn't fast enough.

The door. The room. He dragged himself forward, bruised his elbow, gouged his flesh when his arm hit a corner. The crackle was coming, right behind him. He could feel the fire licking his skin.

He rolled inside the room and waited on the floor for it to start, for his flesh to burn, for him to smell hot metal and singed hair.

There was nothing. It was safe in here. It was safe.

'I'm sorry,' he said. 'I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.'

:=:=:=:

'Clean it up.'

This time his metal arm started to thrum, then nausea and a burning sensation shot through his body.

Good. He liked it better like this. It didn't take him long to beg the doctor to stop—'Only two minutes of you being stubborn, Sergeant. This is good. You are improving.'—but at least when he ran the wet sponge across the wall, hand still trembling, and the words started to drip into nothing, at least he knew he hadn't done it just because the doctor had asked him to.

:=:=:=:

He came to on an examination table. People in masks and gloves started to cut his clothes away. He tried to cover himself up, but his hands barely obeyed him. His right hand must be drugged. His metal one, rusty.

'Please,' the doctor said, out of sight, his voice pursed with disapproval. 'What a perversion, to think we would be in any way interested in looking at you during a medical procedure. You are very sick, Sergeant.'

He was given no space to feel shame, if he even could. Electrode leads were being stuck to his skin, clamps and probes fixed to his body, everywhere. He was sure he could even feel them inside, digging in cold and painful.

Screens fenced him in. He could only move his head a little, but his eyes rolled frantically from side to side. There were screens showing a grey maze inside a whitish oval, screens with block patterns, screens with moving squiggly green lines.

The screen right in front of his eyes flickered once and showed a picture of a dark-haired woman. Maybe a good-looking woman, but the thought was laughable down here.

_I know_… But the thought sank. He didn't think he knew who she was.

'Do you recognise this woman?' the doctor asked.

'No,' he said.

The picture on the screen changed. 'Do you recognise this man?'

'No.'

The pictures kept changing. A dog. A sheep carcass. A girl at the beach. 'Have you ever been here?' 'Do you like this picture?' 'Do you know what this is?' 'Does this picture scare you?'

The dark-haired woman again.

'Have you seen this woman before?'

'No.'

'Lie,' the doctor said.

Stinging pain ripped through his body. He jerked against the restraints. Cries clotted in his throat, but only a whimper squeezed out. The green lines in one of the screens turned to panicked spikes.

The pain receded. He could breathe again, see again.

_But I didn't know her._

_Have you seen her. In the picture before. Have you seen her._

'Do you recognise this picture?'

_Steve?_

'Yes!'

'Lie.'

Pain again. Longer this time, he was sure. By the time it was over his breath came in little ragged gasps.

'Do you like this picture?'

It was a picture of a room. Just an ordinary room.

'Sergeant, please answer. Do you like this picture?'

'I don't know,' he whispered.

The picture on the screen changed. Tears prickled his eyes.

The pain came again a few pictures later, when he said that a picture of an eye being sliced by a razor blade disturbed him. He was sure he had told the truth, but he must not have. The doctor could see his thoughts, spilled out on the screens.

'There is a number and a letter in the screen in front of you,' the doctor said.

The screen was blank.

_Oh god. Where is it?_ 'Where.' He hadn't meant for the word to drop out of his mouth.

'Right in front of you, Sergeant.' The doctor sounded a little testy. 'Please read the number.'

He tried to move his head but it was stuck to the table, a useless lump like the rest of his body. He tried looking sideways, up and down, as far as he could, but he could only see the edge of a screen placed above and behind him, and the very bottom of white shapes on the black background. 'I can't. I can't see.' Even his tongue wouldn't obey him.

Cross-talk.

'It is perfectly visible, Sergeant,' the doctor said. He didn't sound pleased, and bad things happened when the doctor wasn't pleased. 'We can all see it quite clearly. Please don't be stubborn.'

No, he didn't want to be stubborn. He didn't he didn't he didn't. 'Three,' he said, finally. His vision was hazy. The number might as well be floating in front of him.

'Lie.'

:=:=:=:

His face was slippery with cold sweat. He wanted to wipe it away, but he couldn't do that and clean the wall at the same time. His arm and hand, the flesh ones (the weak ones) shook so bad he kept spilling water on the floor.

'You are going to be very good for us, aren't you?' the doctor asked. 'We won't need to correct you again. You want to get better.'

He didn't care about getting better. He just didn't want to go in the dark room again.

The room had made him beg even if he couldn't even hear his own voice in there.

:=:=:=:

The screen showed him films of someone who looked like him. The man who looked like him was wearing thin cotton pyjamas and he looked like a ghost.

It mustn't be him because nothing ever happened to the man on the screen. He just sat on a bed in a room. Sometimes he stood in the middle of the room.

The man on the screen would stare and stare and stare, blinking once in a while, while the clock hands spun.

:=:=:=:

Pictures flickered in front of him. He was on a table (again?). The doctor asked him questions, on and on and on. 'How many people are in this picture?' 'Read the second letter on the screen.' 'Does the woman in this picture remind you of anyone?' 'Does this picture make you feel disgust?' 'Is the boy in this picture wearing a white shirt?' 'Is the boy in this picture frightened?' 'Are you frightened right now?'

The pain would come and go. It was becoming familiar.

'In this picture, do you— _Ach je_.' The doctor sounded disgusted. 'Sergeant, we do not need to know how much you are enjoying this. Try to control yourself.'

_Enjoying—?_

There was chatter from the doctor's table. '—did consider sexual pathology.' The doctor spoke to him again, the disgust only slightly muted. 'We will correct it along with your other abnormal responses, Sergeant.'

_God, what does he see—_

Everything. The doctor saw everything. Every thought, spread and splayed out on the screens.

_Enjoying?_

He couldn't see his own body. Was he… flushing? God, was it worse than flushing, was he—

He _was_ enjoying it, wasn't he? A little bit. When the pain went out and then when it came back again. He must be.

The shame stung harder than the shocks.

The pictures blurred together. Mouths melted into dark holes, bones turned black with mould. His body rocked once in a while, but he wasn't on the table anymore. He lay on his stomach, and a hand was rubbing gentle circles between his shoulder blades. _It's all right, Bucky. It's all right_.

He remembered now. He had forgotten, because he was bad, but he remembered now. This used to happen, when he'd been small and upset, or ill, or had a bad day, or she (who?) had had a bad day. It was safe. Everything would be fine.

_Dad?_

He sat up. 'You really let me down,' his father said, voice still a little tender, as he turned away. He (Bucky, he had to hold on to the name) had to stop him from going. He had to tell his father that something terrible would happen if he went. _Dad. Don't go. I'm sorry. I'll do better. Don't go_. He had to save—

His father turned around.

Instead of a face there was only smooth, featureless skin, two ragged holes where the eyes should be.

He wasn't screaming any more. He was in a maze, in the middle of a snare of windowless corridors.

'Do it, Sergeant,' the doctor's voice said, but he couldn't tell where it was coming from. A growl rang out, only a thin wall away. He started to run.

The growl gave chase, faster and faster, closer and closer.

The screens flickered in front of him. Water dripped down the glass.

The growl caught up with him. It was a dog, big as a horse, fangs wet with spittle. It jumped on him, dragged him to the floor. The metal hand fastened around the dog's neck. 'Do it.' There was a whimper and a snap of bone. The sound made him sick.

He was on the chair again, the one where they stilled his eyes and his mind and put things in his head, things that made him throw up. There were no needles this time, no pictures. The doctor stood in front of him, at the head of a row of white coats who looked on, the bottom halves of their faces hidden by masks.

'Do you finally understand how simple it is, Sergeant?' the doctor said, and wheeled a tray closer to him. On the tray there was a silver dome, a small porcelain jug with a spoon. 'Things that don't work get broken. However, when things work well, it is time for a reward.' He reached down to lift the dome.

He (bucky bucky bucky) expected organs, a severed head. Instead there was a fat slice of chocolate cake, the kind with frosting and a cherry on top. He felt hunger; it rattled somewhere in his belly, unfamiliar. The doctor spooned out a generous dollop of whipped cream from the jar, and set the plate on his knees.

There was a metal fork. He reached out for it, his hand shaking. He was going to stab the doctor with it.

Instead he used it to slice through the cake.

Something scuttled inside the chocolate sponge. Seconds later an insect crawled out, then another. Spiders spilled onto the china plate.

The doctor smiled.

:=:=:=:

'It's not real.'

He was in the room, lying on the bed and staring at the door.

He was holding something in his metal hand. He could feel a slight pressure in the palm. He opened his fist. A cherry rolled out, glossy red, fell off the mattress, and landed on the floor with a soft little plop.

'It's not real.'

The girl in the walls was crying again. No, not crying, making soft sobbing sounds, like an animal that knew no one was coming to release it from its trap.

'It's not real.'

He rolled onto his side. There was a loose thread on the edge of the mattress. He picked at it until he'd pulled a hole in the fabric.

'It's not real.'

:=:=:=:

He ran and ran and ran, in the dark. There were obstacles he had to avoid and he could mostly feel them before they struck him. When he reached the end—a wall; there was no way around the wall—the doctor's voice poured down from the ceiling.

'You did very well, Sergeant. Six kilometres in a little over eight minutes. We will improve on that, of course, and you still don't know how to balance your artificial arm, but for now it is excellent.'

_Six kilometres? Not a straight line. Circles. I've been running in—_

Fog. He was taken to the doctor. The fog was still dispelling as the doctor talked to him. He had trouble keeping the room from spinning.

'You see how much better you feel like when we all work together?' the doctor said, and injected something into his thigh.

He did feel better. Good, almost.

:=:=:=:

Sometimes it was the bad needle.

:=:=:=:

The pills, one round, one oblong, were in front on him, sitting in a little paper cup. He opened his mouth for them.

_You won't give us any trouble, will you?_

It was the doctor's voice, but no one was speaking. He looked up at the person feeding him the pills. He wore glasses, a surgical mask covering his face. Between the cap and the mask, behind the lenses, there were the doctor's eyes (maybe), but that didn't mean anything. The doctor saw everything, was everywhere.

He didn't swallow the pills. He chewed them, and they left a sticky trail of powder on his tongue.

'Can you make her be quiet?'

The two guards looked at him. 'что?' one said.

'Ты можешь приказать ей замолчать?' he repeated. He didn't remember learning how to understand the words or how to say them, but he remembered so little now.

The girl was crying again. It made his bones hurt.

He just wanted her to be quiet.

As the guards walked away, his mind was glass-sharp, glass-bright, just for a moment. He saw the mazes, the rooms with the chairs, the table, the screens, the white coats, the guards, all of it. All of it for the purpose of keeping him in, like the stopper in a bottle. He spoke to the ceiling and the walls, where the doctor lived. 'You think I'm your prisoner,' he said. 'But you're my prisoner too.'

The doctor didn't answer.

After a while the girl went quiet and so did his mind.

:=:=:=:

He didn't have much time. All the bits that hadn't been cut out from inside his head were drifting about, within reach. If he was quick he'd be able to catch them. He ripped his flesh open and began to write, to put it on the wall where he could see, where he would be able to read it when he no longer remembered.

An address that might have been his own. Names. Making jokes for a boy (Steve?) so he'd drink a bottle full of purplish-red. Rows of little lead letters. A tank. Bottles covered in plaster dust. Washing hanging on a line. Things people had said, maybe, headless and tailless.

He filled the cell with words, top to bottom. Halfway through he wondered if he was going to run out of blood, empty himself on the walls. That would be good, wouldn't it? But he didn't. He didn't run out of blood. He didn't even run out of words. The only thing he ran out of was wall.

And time.

He blacked out again.

Always.

When he came to, the walls were sickly-white and empty again. The skin on his hand felt damp. He brought it to his face so he could sniff it. The faintest trace of soap still clung to it.

He hadn't been forced. He didn't remember it, but he knew he hadn't been forced. He didn't have that to cling to. He wasn't nauseous, either, his head didn't ache. The fog had ebbed away, just a little bit. He could hook thoughts together and have them go somewhere for once, but it didn't matter.

Nothing he did mattered. He would wash it away like a tide on sand. Nobody had to make him do it.

He had to wipe it off.

He didn't know how long it took for him to feel the presence in the room. He didn't move. Instead, after a while, he looked at the chair by his bed, the man sitting on it.

'Hi, Bucky,' Steve said.

* * *

><p><strong>TBC…<strong>

* * *

><p><strong>Author's notes:<strong> Another Emergency Puppies/Kittens chapter, I'm afraid. :( Though hopefully (she said) I managed to keep the focus on where I wanted to keep it, i.e., on the psychological effects all this has on Bucky, rather than on horrible things happening for the sake of horrible things happening. The bit with Bucky's father is lifted straight from the comics, specifically _Captain America and Bucky_ #620 (Sep 2011). (You can find the relevant scans here: ic . pics . livejournaldotcom / overlithe / 15266763 / 256675 / 256675 _ original . png and here: ic . pics . livejournaldotcom / overlithe / 15266763 / 257014 / 257014 _ original . png) In this fic's backstory, as well as in my MCU head-canon in general, Bucky's understanding, loving, etc father died in an accident during his son's childhood after telling Bucky he was disappointed over the fact that Bucky got in trouble after promising he wouldn't do it anymore. Basically the main difference from the comics—in terms of the characters' interactions and relationships, that is, obviously there are many other differences in details—is that Bucky's mother is still alive throughout all this and Bucky got into trouble due to not knowing how to stick up for Steve/deal with something else that will come up later in appropriate ways, rather than getting into trouble due to not knowing how to deal with his mother's death in appropriate ways. The line _you're my prisoner too_ is taken from a similar (not identical) line in one of Ruth Rendell's books. I _think_ it was _Make Death Love Me_, but unfortunately while the line has stuck with me the title of the book hasn't! The bottle of purplish-red would have been a bottle of raw liver juice, which was used in the 20s as a treatment for pernicious anaemia (one of pre-serum!Steve's many health problems) until a concentrate was developed in 1928.


End file.
